It takes time to build a masterpiece. Or does it?
There is the time to conceive of, design, and paint it. There are the thousands and thousands of hours of learning to draw and paint … dreadfully at first … then slowly feeling the hand and the eye and the spirit working together … then light dawning on the truth of it all as mastery approaches … and finally …. finally knowing that you can paint anything … the monetary bliss of that, followed by the dark burden of “now what?”
When completely lost in painting, there is no time. In fact, there is no anything. There is a dreamlike sea of color and shape and story and emotion — when the soul expresses itself. I think this is called unity consciousness, at least that’s what I call it. If you’ve ever been in this zone, you know that if there is any time at all, it is experienced in a vastly different way … as plastic and observable. It is not concerned with the habituated reality of a clock-time-march …. it is ours to ride wherever we want … like children on bicycles.
Aside from the commissions I’m just starting, there are only two unfinished paintings in my life — Garden and the Dendera Study. The latter is part of the (yikes!) Unseen Architecture work. It is based on the Dendera Zodiac ceiling bas-relief from the chapel dedicated to Osiris in the Hathor temple at Dendera, an ancient timepiece.
All that’s left to do on Dendera Study is detail the hands of the large figure, and sign it. Have absolutely no idea why I have never bothered to finish it over these dozen or so years …. but today is the day. Like the celestial calendar from who-knows-how-long ago, maybe the little painting and I have cycled back to the proper place to make these last few marks. We have finally crossed an ocean to a place where there is nothing to explain. It sure took us a long time to get here … or did it?
