There was a fall from grace and the many nuances of illusion and ignorance.
This painting came about when I was diving further into the symbol of the pearl I so often paint. The pearl just started appearing one day, breaking through the noise within the desire to become. The pearl rests gently in the medicine bag, a treasure chest in the center of our hearts.
This painting hangs sideways, it started and ended that way but I painted most of it turned once to the right.
Looking at it to the right I see a mask or a skull. It felt like a wise guide was in front of me, a saint in blue robes of the sky. The sun of awakening and enlightenment alive and blazing forth from within. The guide is communicating to the pearl of what has been and what can be.
The green and yellow spoke of Kundalini, the life force energy of a person rising to meet the crown. A teaching of how to use this energy rightly.
There is black and white. The shadow and lightness of a person and life. There’s a butterfly with flames of transformation. There are skin tones and a shared story of falling to the earth.
I thought of my deceased grandfather. It felt like he was with me telling me of how he misused the energy that was his life. How he would do it differently and it would have changed my life. There was regret and understanding. There was also great strength in this energy too, how strong he was and able, and how it’s all inconsequential and always refining itself.
There was consolation and transformation in telling the story of his life from a state of grace. It is the story of the use of ancestral energy, the alpha male energy wanting to control and dominate his world around him. How he was able to do that.
He wanted to live in harmony with this saintly treasure of a pearl, but he had been in the shadow of man, a body in the world.
How to use this energy and gift it to the world in a new way. How to refine the lost lessons of community and learn to string the pearl together with others.
My grandfather lived the life of an alcoholic, a Catholic and a dairy farmer in an isolated and often cold world in Vermont. It was hard and full of struggle. He was a father of eight and a husband to a devoutly Catholic woman. He lived this strength and carried forward a family with strain in their hearts and a desire to be together and keep it all running no matter what. These habits we wear run on forever. This blue of voice is as expansive as the sea and sky and has power to learn to how to truly minister, how to console and bring comfort, no matter what.
We create our world from our hearts and our learned wisdom. It doesn’t stop at death. The value of the life carries on refining itself and burning away the emotionally plundered purse that holds the pearl. Watch our words as they call out into the world. We have the ability to rise above and learn the ancestral pilgrimage of time and the proper use of action and energy used rightly for the good of the community. It was all there ever was and will be, lessons in living together.