Caressed by ever-moving air, 36 x 48 in oil on canvas
A musing on this painting’s significance. It is inspired by my actual view from the home to where we’ve landed and holds in it the gratitude of coming through to the other side (selling our house to fund the business, finding a good job, moving the kiddos–twice, mourning the loss of Curt’s father–all in one year). It carries in it my desire to put aside a grievance that is affecting others and to take my resentment out of my attitude (an example of how hard it is to separate from the work what is happening in my heart and head). It is a humbling to the beauty that is in front of me every morning when I wake up. It is a new appreciation for the sunrise and how having this experience gives me pause onto the possibilities of the new day.
Here are a couple of Rilke’s writings which share this sentiment.
Here in this vast landscape, swept by winds from the sea, I wonder if there is any person anywhere who can answer the questions that stir in the depths of your being. For even the best miss the mark when they use words for what is elusive and nearly unsayable. But nonetheless, I believe you are not left without a solution, if you turn to things like those that are refreshing my eyes. If you ally yourself with nature, with her sheer existence, with the small things that others overlook and that so suddenly can become huge and immeasurable; if you have this love for what is plain and try very simply, as one who serves to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, perhaps not in your conscious mind, but in your innermost awareness. Worpswede, July 16, 1903 Letters to a Young Poet
and
I am learning to see something new. In addition to sky and land, a third thing has equal significance: the air.
Things usually appear to me as finite and limited in comparison with the great body of Earth. But here there are many things that seem like islands—alone, bright, caressed on all sides by ever-moving air that makes their forms stand out so clearly. Early Journals
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