“from the studio” prayer painting
“I beseech Thee … to make of my prayer a fire that will burn away the veils which have shut me out from Thy beauty, and a light that will lead me unto the ocean of Thy Presence.”
- Prayer revealed by Baha’u'llah
OK, now I guess I am getting really religious.
wow. I just lost all my readers.
But I guess, sometimes I gotta take that risk. I don’t get paid to paint, so heck, I figure if your still with me, you gotta be my kinda people.
So this little number is an illustration for the above quote. And I see it as that – an illustration. Its meant to be cliche and almost kitchy in the representation of these little symbolic vignettes that are living in this surreal and alternate universe. Im thinking Steven King meets Cormac McCarthy, and they decide to do a comic book about prayer. Yup. That’s what I am going for here. (even though I never read either writers, but I sorta got a vibe about what they do… I could be totally wrong here… but then, whose to know?)
Anyways, I don’t see this as a final piece, although I am pretty happy with it. Its fun and cheeky, while being about something so ominously powerful, I can’t even fathom approaching the subject. I also hope it gives a jumping off point for conversation. Also, since praying in front of my kids, I am aware that they may be listening, learning and have questions. That is why I thought illustrations would be nice. As reductive as that may be.
I attended a talk by painter Otto Don Rogers who is also a Baha’i and a supremely amazing painter from Canada. In his talk he showed a painting that has a moon, a tree and some water in it. He held it on the screen long enough for all of us to go “oooo, aaaah”. and then he said “this is not really a very good painting, or worth talking about – except that it was the starting point for me to create this…” and he put another slide up of a sculpture he made from rusted steel. I’m not one for sculpture, in that I don’t know much about it, and often am confused by it, but after seeing the painting, and the connection, I was really moved by the piece. His process is to carefully create an abstraction of an idea, to a point where it still resonates with the initial thought, but goes beyond it. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t have a reference point of the initial idea, though, its hard to work back to it.
Never the less, this is my first piece on the subject.
