Brought Into the Fold

I started folding some seven years ago after a strange and potent dream. It was 2006, some seven months before my mother’s diagnosis, when I first dreamed of paper birds. I dreamed of my fingers gliding over creases and angles of white and red coming together slowly in a figure that was more than the sum of its parts. I dreamed that the paper bird suddenly came alive and flew out of my hands, delicate and trembling with the joy of living.

Art is a Language

There is a small change in the angle of the light and that smell which is so difficult to characterize. The temperature pitched briefly before the ice storm this weekend, and though the temperature has done that dozens of times over the course of the last two months, this time it was different. The air felt less oppressive somehow and even the later cold was moist and not quite as biting as it had been. The white-gray of the clouds deepened to a dark gray-blue and the pastel tones of winter suddenly dropped out of the sky. I’d think I was crazy for noticing, but the geese agree with me—most of them have taken wing to head back toward Canadian homes and you can see water at the local hot springs again.   

The first breaths of spring are a welcome sensation at the end of a northern winter, but while it normally makes me ecstatic, this year it feels like small comfort. I have surgery in a few days and this annoys me greatly because it means I will have to pause learning how to mix the particular colors of the spring-dawn sky to recover from it. I spent yesterday looking at professional watercolors online because I am already at the point where the quality of my materials is limiting what I can and can’t do. On some level, I know I should wait to make any such purchase until after I find out how much this surgery (and the accompanying follow-up procedure) is going to cost. I mentioned my shopping late last night while talking to my father and brother, expecting the usually lecture about being financially responsible and the usual ‘wait till your birthday’ response.

“Art is costly,” my father nodded, “not much you can do about that.”

That surprised me because, coming from my father, this is a kind of permission. He said a similar thing when my car needed fixing, and when my old computer died. It’s a phrase he reserves for costs he deems as important enough to go into debt for...

Painting the Light Part 2: Lessons from Watercolor

The hardest thing about watercolor is retraining one’s eyes to see differently. Highlights are created with the glowing white of untouched paper and to manage that, one must begin any picture not by painting that which the eye is naturally drawn to—the shine and light of the foreground—but rather by working from the deepest of the shadows outward into the light.

Paint the Light

I get sequestered fairly often, don’t I?

It isn’t a matter of having nothing to say, nor is it a matter of not having the time to say it. It’s more a peculiar sort of isolation that comes from not having the words for what one is experiencing. It was Ra this time, and I am coming to understand now just how great a role His essence plays in the life I lead...

Creation, Radiance, and a Meditation of Self

I was thinking this week, on the relationship between my Fathers and what it means for me, which led to meditating on the meaning of my name, which led to some rambling writing on creativity and the nature of my being. I will share the result of that here because it has been a while since I posted anything and because some of it may be interesting even if the overall composition is not fully translated out of my internal language:

Winged Set Animal Statue

First, if you haven't seen Setken's awesome winged Set painting, go see it! I saw that just before the photo shoot of my newly minted little guy here and had to laugh at the coincidence. Especially since we were both  at least partially drawing from the same source images in Te Velde as inspiration. (^_^)

I made this little guy earlier tonight and I think He came out pretty good, if I do say so myself...