Turning Within and Blossoming Without

Turning Within and Blossoming Without

​"Turning Within and Blossoming Without" - oil on cradled wood panel, 18 x 24 x 1.5 inches.  Ready to hang.  (click on the image to purchase)

Continuing our exploration of Maureen Seaton's Fiddleheads: 
​
​Similarly, when you hurt me, I curled like a mouse behind my third eye. I realize what an
odd thing it is to believe as I do in my third eye and the mouse behind it that furls like a fern

and whimpers like a fern being boiled on a monster stove beside its brothers and sisters.
Poor mouse. The things that make a person odd are odd themselves. Think of DNA,

the way it resembles the rope Jack climbed to secure his future and that of his aging Mom.
Or the way a sudden wave can drag a child under, that addiction to adrenalin, her

siblings farther away and more powerless than she ever imagined, the pure and ecstatic

irreversibility of undertow. It’s odd to come back to life, as they say, she came back to life.
- FROM FIDDLEHEADS BY MAUREEN SEATON

Think of DNA, Seaton writes.

Oh, I do.  The things that make a person odd are odd themselves.  Oddly, 50% of my DNA is mysterious, of unknown origin, vague shadows of  Turkey and Italy and other unexpected lands.  An unknown father.  A story that died with my mother, before it was ever told.  It remains her secret.

It's odd to come back to life, says Seaton.  And yet we do, cycling through seasons of turning within and blossoming without, coming back to life when we rediscover lost parts of ourselves and when we discover new parts we perhaps never knew existed.  Seaton's words take us down into that dark valley, hinting at the irreversible and then suddenly resurrecting us with a single sentence - ​she came back to life.  Oh!

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​About the art: beginning with black gesso over an old acrylic painting and carving through the gesso while wet to expose some of the original colors.  Once dry, a loose figure sketch in white.  Working from the outside-in to further define the figure by using a rubber wedge and walnut oil thinned paint.  For the figure and the moon, many layers of thinned paint with broad strokes, keeping it loose.  Blending with fingers and a soft cloth.  Allowing some edges to remain crisp while blurring others.  Carving through the wet paint with a small rubber edge to create texture in the "fabric".  Standing (or sitting) ten feet back periodically to keep from losing the gesture of the piece.  I've got a small sofa at a set distance from the work in process now.  Sitting there and contemplating each piece daily has helped me see better where a painting works and doesn't.