The Garden

I've been more enigmatic than usual lately, talking about a garden I can't get into... Linda asked what I was talking about, and I replied to her comment - but I'll repeat it here, with some embellishment, editing, and conclusio and then some:

I am trying to get into my inner world, my heart, to paint what is there without rules like perspective, or gravity. That much I've said before. What I came to feel trying to set up the last painting (the one that is now last night's mess, and was four different drawings, none right) is that I am outside an extremely large garden, with a high wall (no peeking) and I can't get in. Inside is that land without rules, where my inner child can paint. That's my Hundertwasser place, where flies my version of the Twittering Machine, the Jabberwocky, etc. I know I'll get in there, but not how or when, yet. I wasn't content with any of the four drawings because they weren't THERE, and I wasn't interested in painting something else outside the walls. I feel like that's what I've been doing - painting my way closer and closer... Finally I just plunged in and painted, resulting in last night's highly colored mess. I'm not sure this painting is going where I want to go, either, but at least I'm not sure it isn't. And I'd rather move than sit still. The painting Coming Home (above) is like a shadow or hint of the place, and I think it was also part of how I at last arrived at the walls.

I can see the garden walls so clearly I could almost draw them. They are bathed in ruddy end-of-day sunlight (my favorite, the last hour before sunset), and they are of sandstone, almost mauve in color, but enriched and warmed by the gorgeous light. They are about ten feet high, blocks laid on blocks without mortar showing anywhere. They have lots of corners and turns; the outer boundary is an interesting shape. I have not tried to climb them - it doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Ivy and vines festoon the top, but there is no chink or gap or gate anywhere, and I know my inner artist/child has walked miles around this wall without finding a way in. It's beautiful outside the walls, and I know it's even more so inside. I've been there a few times before in dreams. And some songs send me glimpses, too. Like Bruce Cockburn's lyric, "Had another dream about lions at the door; they were not as frightening as they were before."

The last time my inner vision was this clear was shortly after I'd become unblocked, when I found out several things. First, my inner artist doesn't have a beard. I think I already knew that. He had been very still, pale, cold, and not breathing, under a lot of scrub in a hilly place above a sea. At first I tought he was mute beacuse he was so newly awake, and had been like a corpse for so long. But now I realize that he doesn't speak with words - only acts, gestures, and pictures. He's well and quite active now, and I don't usually see him - we're more integrated than that. I'm often looking at things inside me through his (my) eyes. The last time I did actually see him he was on the shore, where the sunlight was incredible, and he was going out sailing every day, alone, out of sight of land, looking for something. Then the paintings started coming more frequently and I lost sight of him.

To sum up: I want to paint from a different part of me - deeper within me. It's a longing and an anticipation and a comfort all at once, to know I'm moving towards this, to want it. And I'm not all that interested in painting anything else, or any other way.

Figure drawing feels like part of this - I don't anticipate that stopping. But I see the figures and even the method of drawing them changing as I explore this.

This is the artistic equivalent of a spirit quest. I'm Pellinore chasing my questing beast. Only it's a place, I think, and my brushes and I will eventually live there.