Stillness Admidst The Chaos Finding the perfect moments where I can

Taken as a whole, the paintings I share with you here are meant to reflect just one kind of experience – and hopefully inspire the same in you and other viewers.

It could best be described as the experience of the daydream – where time seems to draw to a standstill, everything else falls away, and you become fully absorbed in whatever you’re looking at, doing, or thinking – moments that are imbued with silence, beauty, and a sense of profound connection to the wider world.

It might be tempting to imagine the paintings being created in exactly the same environment – almost like in a monastic scriptorium, where the only sound is quill on parchment.

But lately I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on how utterly untrue that is.

I had some work done on my house this week – I’m thrilled that it happened, but it was chaos.

It was on short notice (my contractor was able to reschedule and fit the project in now rather than later), so there were a few frantic days of moving the contents of several rooms around, followed by noise, dust, and general havoc, and moving said contents back to the proper rooms.

I briefly considered not painting and focusing on other things, but lately I find that less and less of an option – the work must continue.

So, between all the interruptions and everything else that conspires against silence, beauty, and a sense of profound connection to the wider world, I knuckled down and got to work.

And it occurred to me just how much like all of life that is – the constant muck and mire of just getting by and doing what needs to be done – and only rarely do we get to dictate the terms.

Yet, every now and then, like an island mountain rising up out of the waters, we have those precious moments that take us beyond all that – the embrace of a loved one, beholding works of art that truly move us, or even looking up on a clear night and seeing the stars.

How fortunate.