The cries of the world

If we understand creativity to be fueled by the tension between the visible world and the invisible, then it becomes easier to understand why -- when I had intended to paint something entirely different yesterday -- this was the result.

Some part of me is aware of the enormous destruction happening elsewhere in our state due to the fires currently raging there.  And apparently that part of me insisted on bringing that awareness into consciousness by whatever means possible.

So when I took up my palette knife, intending to paint over the usual reddish background I create for my seascapes, I found that when I tried to apply white and blue it just didn't work; I had to wash it off.  The canvas wanted more red and yellow, orange and black, and this was the result.

At first I thought it might be the beginnings of my usual end-of-summer hunger for Fall, or a response to the more autumnal colors that predominate in our new home.  It was only after I walked away and returned for another look that I realized it was about the fires; the awareness bubbling just beneath the surface of my mind that people I know are out fighting those fires; that people I know have friends and relatives who have lost their homes; that people I know had been planning vacations in these now-blackened landscapes.

We cannot ignore the troubles of the world.  Our psyches are intimately entwined with the rest of creation. Every time there is a wound elsewhere, some cell in our bodies will cry out in sympathetic pain.  And that which strives to be known will take whatever avenue necessary to bring the cries of the world to our attention. The invisible longs to be visible, and when we take the time to create, we cannot always predict what will emerge.  The question is -- what do we do with that awareness once it's brought to the fore?