Best laid plans

Well, the theory was that I would use my paintings to express what I was learning from Teilhard de Chardin: I would start with an underlying unity, build in some chaos, and then somehow find a way to establish a new kind of unity out of that chaos.

But perhaps only God can do that?  Because once the chaos got created (and I have to say, that was a lot of fun) it started to get a little out of hand.  And now I'm kind of stuck: I got to the point where I appreciated all the different individual elements that were contributing to the chaos -- which I think is a good thing -- but I can't for the life of me figure out what needs to be done to tie it all back together.

The theory was that I would apply thin films of color over the existing elements -- you can see I've already done a little of that -- but there are competing impulses in me.  Some part of me wants to add some quiet blues to tone it down, but... it's a bit like those wildfire paintings I did earlier: another part of me revels in the fiery tones of yellow, red and orange, and is reluctant to let them go. Which, I'm sure, says something about how we humans like to hold onto our grudges and our anger...

The news clipping, BTW, is an article from the newspaper I used to publish, back in the early 90's; it's about a joint committee of Muslims and Christians in New York condemning the violence between these two religions.  It seemed somehow appropriate, that that aspect of our chaos hasn't changed much.

At any rate, I'm thinking I'll need to set this one aside for a bit (though I can see, now that I have it on the computer, that I want to tone down the left edge a bit so it matches the right edge; a little thin layer of grayish blue should take care of that...