I have to thank my friend Jen Worden for the title of this painting. The other week I posted it on IG and I mentioned that it was untitled and she gifted me with a Rumi quote in the comments.
Earth turns to gold in the hands of the wise. -Rumi
In my last post I wrote about working on a series about connections and seeing ourselves reflected in others. This is one of the pieces that I created circling around this theme. I used the images from prairie plants that I took years ago when I lived in Chicago. I just love prairies plants because of their deep root systems. I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere.
The idea of having the plant imagery reflect each other or away from each other, as in this one, is something I started exploring back in 2011 with a painting I called Beyond Form. And then I picked it back up with a paintings Each Other and From Darkness, Life both made in 2015. Then I started thinking of reflections, but not symmetrical, and also the idea of “as above, so below” and thinking about root systems. Kinship was one of the first exploring that direction in 2022. And there’s been more since.
Funny “how “Each Other” was the title of the 2011 painting considering what I wrote about last time. And look, the prairie plants! I come back to my images time and time again. It’s like I keep continuing the conversation with myself. And each time, I understand a little bit more of what I am trying to say. None of this is planned either. I just meander around following a thread that interests me. For over a decade now, it seems now that I wrote all that out. Wow, that’s crazy.