Two years ago I retired as an art therapist of 40 years and I am presently a full time artist. In the course of my life I have experienced grief in various manifestations: divorce, cancer, relationship, and deaths. Each grief I lost a part of myself yet, somehow, I found my Self. Each loss became a secret gift into learning more about life and who I am. I liken this experience to the “Easter” story of going into the “cave” and emerging out in a “resurrection”. St John of the Cross describes the dark night of the soul as a place of union with God: the darkness is a place of knowing the unknowable, a place of faith, a place of love.
“Resurrection” was painted 20 years ago as part of a series of bodies floating in space. Here the transition from the disorientation and loss of control of grief into the light and sight of the resurrection is embodied in the figure. The Sashiko embroidery I added recently. Here the body is grounded in a way by the Buddhist “Seven Treasures”
pattern moving through his body and surrounding him. It is said the pattern represents the 7 precious jewels of the Buddhist teachings. The painting was created at a time when I was searching for “sight” after various losses. Choosing to stitch through a painting I had thought “precious” and finished, I experienced a new vision of the image and a new meaning.
The image is not only a Resurrection of a person but of a painting.
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