The Evolving Painting

Our Lady of the Garden

Love. Love. Love-- a mantra worth living. Do only what you love. Create only what you love. Live with people you love. Work with people you love. Hold yourself in a space of unconditional love.

I liked my 24” x 24” painting, She Brings the Spring, but I didn’t love her. Propped up in the corner of my studio, she seemed pale as if she were trying to mimic wallpaper and avoid being noticed.

Instead of obscuring her image beneath opaque paint, I led her into a garden. I wrapped her in translucent layers of acrylic glaze and decorated her with original, linocut mono prints. Now, she sees with the eyes of love. All is beauty. She sees only love.

Is this possible in a violent world? For thousands of years, saints and mystics have managed to see love and light, hope and faith where others saw only sand. There is a way to see the beauty and love surrounding you.

Beneath the veneer of diverse colors, languages, tightly-held beliefs, you find one species, one people, whose dreams and desires are more alike than different. You find yourself in a garden of love when you peel back the illusion of separation.

I will meet you in the garden

We will shed our skin

Leave our old bodies and look on them

Our new ones could be anything

                            Lyric by Rogue Valley

©Claudia Rose, Ph.D.

#loveandlight #worldpeace #mixedmediaart #painting #love #claudiarose