I shared this painting on my FB page yesterday thinking it finally finished. This morning I’m not so sure. I need to hang it and see whether it hangs peacefully or nags me further.
Someone asked me on FB if it was hard to do, due to the words written on it! I’ve been thinking about the question. After all these years I still find art hard. At least it is a weird mixture of hard and easy. I mean, how difficult is it to put paint onto a canvas? It’s hardly going down a coal mine, as a Yorkshire friend said to me years ago! Yet painting is challenging.
Painting at is best is alchemy and painters magicians. Art has the possibility of shifting consciousness and opening doors in the imagination, both in the process of making and for the viewer. It’s why great art is enduring and yet the specifics as to why art can ‘move’ us are elusive. It’s something we feel, an intangible.
And the title of this painting?
We don’t need a crystal ball to know our planet is under threat from the greed of humans. The words embedded hundreds and hundreds of times in the multiple layers in this painting are ‘be fucking kind’ and ‘plant trees!’ Notes to self, as much as anything!
I had a bumper sticker years ago that said ‘Commit Random Acts of Kindness!’ I loved the message on my car, which reminds me – when we were children an outing in the car would result in dad’s windscreen being covered in insects. This no longer happens.
We are destroying the insect world with pesticides and yet we continue to do so. Are we so stupid that we still don’t realise that killing insects kills everything and everyone. Humankind blinded by stupidity! Human kind? Human unkind more like!
This beautiful golden moth feels like an angelic visitor this morning landing on my computer screen whilst writing.
It’s time to get back into the garden my friend.
Be kind today. Kx
