Each Other

Each Other
encaustic mixed media
12×12 inches

I completed this painting over a week ago and it is part of a series of paintings I am working on right now. I am still ruminating on the hows, whys, and whatfors of the series, but I know what direction I am headed. “Each Other” is the second piece of the series. The first one was “Beyond Form” that I created in 2011. The palette for this one has a wintery feel, doesn’t it? I think that it was a cool grey Chicago winter day that day when I was last working on it. Snow was falling all around outside. Perhaps that was the influence?

While I was painting it, the first two lines of Rumi’s poem kept running through my head. I actually couldn’t even remember the exact words, but I remembered the feel of it. At one point, I couldn’t take it anymore and went to my computer and did a quick search and found the poem. After I read it, I just had that feeling of everything falling into place.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
-Rumi

My plan is for this painting and the others that I have been working on to be part of the 2 person show that I will be having with Crystal Neubauer in March at PerficalSense Studio. Crystal and I had known each other through our years online, but didn’t actually meet in person until I moved back to Chicago, as she is from northern Illinois. We really got to hang out though last summer when we both taught at EncaustiCamp, where we will both be teaching again this year. I’m really looking forward to seeing our paintings hanging together- while our work is very different, they share a similar quiet, meditative quality.

If you are in the Chicagoland area, I just got word that 3 of my encaustic paintings will be shown by The Black Cloud Gallery this February at their third Art Bazarre. I will post information about that soon, but the gist is that every piece of artwork that will be in the gallery has to be $200, no more, no less. So if you are in the market for affordable art at $200, then you should definitely check out the show.

I have a full day in the studio tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it. Lots to get done.

Thank you for all the encouraging comments about the portraits I did with the kids in my family. I really can’t wait until the portraits are done for my son’s preschool class. They are turning out really great. The kids are now working on little poems to go along with their artwork. It will be so fun to see it all come together and hanging up in the school next month.