If A Soul Was A Blue-faced Honeyeater In A Drunken Parrot Tree

“If A Soul Was A Blue-faced Honeyeater In A Drunken Parrot Tree”

Oil on belgian linen board

Unframed

12″ x 12″

With this piece I wanted to make sure I really showed the bird and not the flowers, but still showed the flowers. Not easy to do and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. As I painted I thought how like every day existence mimics the same challenge. Maybe you want to show your soul, not the accumulated material paraphernalia that goes along with it, and yet still give the things credence for after all they reflects and help make recognisable the greater you in this material plane. You want to have this life be about your soul rather than about the natural world that surrounds it (the things you have, the places you’ve been, the titles, assets and liquidity), and yet you must operate within it. You must use it, adhere to its rules and create with it. There’s a balance required of light and shadow, a composition that must be planned and worked though and yet…. there must be an allowance for free-flow. Oh how awareness of the nature of existence is a wonderful thing – for you can let go. You can let go of blame and pain and desired outcomes and instead place yourself in infinite curiosity and have the confidence to try and flop, and then try again. To simply create for creation’s sake. To exist and not exist in this plane. There really is nothing to lose when your bird remains in focus. The flowers are there, they add colour and help the subject/soul have a sense of being grounded within the composition, but they are not the subject itself. They never will be. If you attempt to make them the focus, put them on the pedestal, the picture immediately loses balance. To me, it is quite a wondrous thing that the most captivating images are often those with the darkest darks and lightest lights. Light and shadow. We admire this in an external image, and yet to see it within ourselves we wish to hide it, create a monotone. How bland. To allow for the complexity and yet utter simplicity of dark and light within the image of our existence. Whoa. What a captivating scene/creation it makes.

What an interesting painting you become. Something the world can instantly be drawn to, admire, understand and marvel at and see within themselves. Something to encourage them to be honest in their showings. To come out from hiding.