PORTRAIT OF THE GIRL IN THE RED BATHING SUIT

This is finally a portrait of a most beautiful person... my daughter Cecilia. Like all portraitists I hope to catch the essence of one person and by extension of all people... of all young women at the moment they enter into their true selves. My therapist Robert Pogue and his mentor Carl Jung feel that we have our true selves and our blinded everyday selves. Our one quest in this life of labyrinths is to follow the Ariadne thread and re-discover who we really are and who we have really been all along. The centre of this painting is the red bathing suit... the only red in the entire painting. At that moment of entry into the cold water the diver becomes alive...maybe for the first time... maybe forever. So the plunge is the plunge into awakening. The cold gold water is the world of evermore... the world of God's dream... this CREATION that is unfolding as I type this note. My daughter's eyes are wide open in the underwater. Her spirit guides are present. She is ready to awaken. She is finally born. Born to life. Born to death. The evermore is here. The creation is so fantastically beautiful. It is Love. Time to be happy my brothers and sisters. You and I are alive!!!!

SPIRIT GUIDES

All my paintings have spirit guides. Fruit bats in PERSEPHONE DESCENDING. The Crow in CROW. The fruit bat, the wolf and the crow in RED GUITAR. The three wolves in RELEASE. The wolf and the whales in THIRD EYE. Piero della Francesca in GODDESS. The black and white twin sides of Bryan in I AM. Shiva in TREE (technically a god not a spirit guide)In PLUNGE I invoke the spirit of the GREAT HORNED OWL hidden in the limber pine and the two RAINBOW TROUT in the Laurentian lake. Spirit guides are with us always. Cecilia plunging from the bright noon air of consciousness into the cold gold water of the inner world need a guide in the day light and two guides in the dream world. Friends the world is more mysterious than we like to think. Accept the inner world and ask for guidance. It will be given.

A DUEL WITH CLAUDE MONET

My second painting. The most beautiful thing in the world (apart from my daughter Cecilia)..... water. My goal in this exercise was to paint water. Monet was not far from my mind. The perfect moment for me is diving into green gold cold Laurentian water on a hot day. That is pleasure. The bottom half of the painting is that green gold cold water of my memory with hints that it is deep and will get deeper. How does water water bend when it is entered? How do I convey ripples from a centre? How does light reflect and refract from the surface of water? Still water near the cliff. Agitated water in the distance. How should I express the idea of SPLASH! There is no sun in this painting. The sun is just off stage. Stage left. The light splays along the surface. Water close. Water in the distance. I accept the challenge Claude. Voila - ma riposte......

THE PLUNGE

               The feather, the down, the floating free

               The milky foam of the galax-sea 

               The wool of the cottonwood, dandelion down

               The snowy sweep, the drifted up cloud

              

Have you like me not laid in the dark awake?

Have you like me not sought an abiding grace?

Have you like me not opened your inward eyes?

Have you like me not seen the ocean rise?

Can you discard your human skin oh snake?

Can you not surf and crest on the prism wave?

Can you well up and spread like silver quick...

& then return to the flame of the single wick?

When you become your luminous self divine 

Return to the ebb & flow of timeless time

The pearl resides beneath the filmy layers

& here is there & now is everywhere

               Plunge oh plunge to the surface clear

               The mirror of one the glass of ever-near

               Pierce the single mirror of you,

               Pierce the perfect... plunge on through

FRUIT OF THE TREE

It all happened because of the beautiful rubies found in the heart of the fruit. The old stories say it was because of just six pomegranate seeds. Some say that in the garden of Eden it was not the serpent’s apple that tempted Eve but the red fruit with the wine red rubies. He walked in the Garden & He saw it was too perfect. Like the surface of a still pond. He threw in a pebble. Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue one. "You can be awake or you can stay in the dream... the choice is yours."  A gift is not a gift if it is not freely given. The receiver of the gift must be ready to receive the gift. It is through suffering we receive the gift of eternity. Thank you Eve. Thank you Trinity. Gift given. Gift received.

CLOUD ATLAS

My new favourite book, my new favourite movie: CLOUD ATLAS. The three score & ten of our years here seems so limited.... like reading just one novel then calling it quits. I am not so sure I believe in re-incarnation but I am attracted to the idea of transfiguration. When I fell in love with my beautiful wife Katmandu I knew for certain that I knew her very, very well. Have you ever fallen in love? You will agree with me it is not the meeting of strangers but the recognition of  long lost friends... travelling companions. I took one look into Kat's eyes. The world disappeared. This was my first ever painting. I painted Persephone going into the Underworld. Of course my model was Kathleen. Those are her Tiger-green eyes. Fearless, she left her family...  her mother... journeyed to the dream world of love seeking Hades the God of the Underworld. Guess who she found... Moi! That does not make me the King of the Underworld. But I do know it was me she was looking for.

FRUIT BATS!!!!!!

My art is two-fold. I wish to explore pure form on a canvas with the abandon & focus of Kandinsky. Conversely, I wish  to render the objects of creation with the same verisimilitude as Durer.  Line, colour,  composition. Voila... a bat in flight.  I love bats. These fruit bats are really more like flying foxes. Who amongst us would not relish the possibility of lifting our arms up & with a swooping scoop of the air rising from the cave wall out into the moon lit night looking for ripe Guavas. I am falling deeper and deeper in love with my life. Can you believe that these creatures exist!!!! The beauty is astounding. I am living in the Mystery. I am walking in the Beauty. Fruit Bats. What next?

THE MOTHER LEFT BEHIND

The daughter leaves the mother. The mother left her mother who left her mother. The story of Persephone is the story we all enact when we leave the ones we love... as we must. Demeter in her grief ends the spring. She plunges the land in drought. Persephone the Goddess of spring becomes the Goddess of the Underworld. In my painting she is wide awake. She knows where she is going. She knows her mother sits at the entrance to the world of dreams weeping. An ocean of tears cannot stop her. The journey between the worlds... that is the only journey. Fearless. We leave the Beauty we have been walking in to accept our destiny. The darkness below beckons like the soil embracing the roots of the Morning Glory. Fearless.

PERSEPHONE DESCENDING

We meet at the corner store after crocus rain
He brings me lilies gathered up the meadow lane
But I am fuschia through & through & through
I’m fresh from an evening swim in the lilac moon
Sun lights on waterfall, my hair so golden loose
I sing - he only hears the honey in my voice
He never sees the sadness in my winter eyes

Persephone Persephone
Goddess of the underworld
Goddess of the gorgeous spring
Going down down down
Down to the man in the midnight hall
Down to the lord of your sorrow
Down to the owner of your heart


We drink sangria at the Golden Dragon Room
You tell me April days of dreams to come
We stroll the streets in early morning mist
I’m somewhere else with one I can’t resist
I’ll tell you of my mother behind the garden wall
& how she sells her fairest flowers in the fall
You never see the sadness in my winter eyes...chorus

For just a while you want to ride beside
But can you come where all my darkness lies?
The pomegranate wine is heavy-slow
A place you cannot follow... I must go
Dark my love, dark as a fresh-dug grave
You love my breezy smile my flower grace
You drown.... in the wells of my winter eyes... chorus