Passage PASSAGE Being with my father when he passed away, making the transition that we all will experience, changed me and my art in unexpected ways. There is a real, physical, painful awareness that starts to bleed into a more surreal, nebulous, and non-linear state of being. [Image Description: Abstract watercolor on off-white fiber paper, depicting a nebulous wispy floating wash, in pink, brown, and grey with a touch of light blue, crosses downward from left to right. A thin vein of bright opaque crimson in the center.] There is a visceral pain of flesh and blood. There is also a strange type of joy as the rush of love and memories fills the soul which now has these massive voids to fill. The passage of time is inevitable and this brings both an immense grief and a sort of cautious optimism. This newfound duality is unsettling but the feeling of submitting to the inevitable is oddly relieving. [Image Description: Abstract watercolor on fiber paper, depicting a glowing pale yellow figure in the center, surrounded by a nebulous, brownish yellow wash, surrounded again by a deeper coloured, web-like pattern of red, cobalt, black and purple wash, with a system of cobalt tentacle-like, or root-like arms, which seem to be glowing with the same pale yellow, reaching out to the edge of the image, in all directions.] It has been a great challenge to try to capture and process this new state of being, but I am compelled to continue letting my intuition, as well as the paint and brush guide my hand in translating the images in my head and in my heart. My artwork before this experience was more literal, more illustrative. [Image Description: Abstract watercolor on fiber paper, depicting a plum coloured wash frame, which graduates as an ombre effect to luminous ochre and yellow, toward the center. A pale, glowing human figure stands at the center. My goal was to recreate that which was physically visible, the way I saw it. Holding my dad’s hand while he transitioned, feeling his body cool down, exhaling so much that I could literally feel the emptiness in my chest. Now that I have spent days and days in this more ethereal and spiritual space, my work tends to grasp for the images that solely represent feelings, thoughts, and sights seen by the heart, not the eyes. [Image Description: Silhouette of a figure, depicted in black, facing a white or very pale purple light, in the center of a tunnel. The walls of the tunnel graduate towards the edges in a wavy ombre effect, from center light to darker purple and finally blue, with wave-like drawn details in black ink.] The void where my heart should be, where his love filled my heart. Only, then to inhale and feel that his love had not gone anywhere, but is still indeed all around. Empty to full, and back again, as I breathed each breath and my father no longer did. It is a cloud of memories that lingers around my head and is punctuated with jolts of love and painful reality. This is my process that continues. Passage 2017
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