:: 2021-23 :: 45cm x 180cm in three 45cm x 60cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks and Markers on Canvas ::
I have to make through what darks
|
I will become through what trials |
I will be a blaze a beacon |
This artwork has had a long gestation. It was first sketched as part of a determination to shine during a mental health trembling in the years 2020-23. This trembling took a much deeper turn for the worse in 2021 when a few days after drawing it, I busted my knee, an event which led to an inability to walk, a deep sense of grief at the passing of an old life, and a turning away from art into the solace of poetry.
As I began to slowly heal, and steadily find my way – not back, but forward – into new light, the beautiful Beacon boy started to call me once again, beckoning me: “Remember when your hands curved me onto paper, recall when you evoked me as your shining soul even in the darkest night…?”
And so, in 2022, I began working on him again, let my hands intuitively guide me through all my difficulties into wonder. In an animated sky of Earth, Sun, Moon, six planets and a seventh mysterious unknown body, ‘Beacon’ raises his hand to hold the light of the world.
His body is a portal to verdant nature – or he is tattooed with it, you decide – and he lifts his awestruck eyes to the unknown of who I – and we all – may in the future become, “through what darks have done… through what trials may come…”, those challenges which make us stronger and set us upon new tracks of expanded life.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a nineteenth century French artist, whose physical traumas and debilitating pains were much greater than mine, once said of his art and life: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains”. And Beacon does indeed remain: he shimmers through my soul, blazes my eyes with light, sees me through to the ecstasies and wonders on the other side of sorrow…
