insang
acrylic & color pencil on 5 x 7 wood panel
it was the serenade of sound that carried us in the softness of this scene. To paint this meant knowing that the songs coming from the den were only borrowed from the same insects that hummed outside in this glen where I stood bare to stare. All those shushes and wilts from the lips of our guide were chimed in time like those crickets who use the vessels of leaves to carry their sweet crones to the rest of their hive. Noise that our ears are not equipped to hear. But I had the milk of the vine in me to really transcribe the vibe of it, so I heard it loud and clear. Those vocal crescendos that a human tongue strives to find are just attempts at the glorious tones of jubilant flowers. How loud are their colors and how much do we pine to love them? The language of plants and their multitude of tiny hosts is an entangled microsmic symphony and it is only with our gift for desire, for sensitivity, that we can earn it. It is that same finesse that makes a brushstroke worthy too if you’re in any want to try to translate it. It was the prism of moon glow in this light that I noticed but it’s the nighttime songs that call me back to it in any given moment when I need it most and those my body will never forget. It means listening in such awe and rapture to have it recreated here. The rest of the world, so noisy, so obsessed with destruction ~ for bullying what is good and true and so consumed by distractions ~ so very completely lost from where we all come from, from what has always been near, what is right here, what just shines on and on and on: what beauty has entirely in her power to transform in us if we just let her lead us.