A Year With Rilke: April

One of the most iconic scenes from the Pacific Northwest is the mist on hills, or more poetically as I like to refer to it, the softness touching the earth. There is something about the sky mingling with the tree tops that stops our gaze. I started painting this subject not long after many of my family members passed in a short time frame. Those of us that believe we are only a breath away from death, only 2 inches away from the unknown, find comfort in the idea that the upper realm of sky can physically and visually interact with the more permanent and heavy objects standing firm on the ground in such a beautiful and metaphorically rich way. This subject is a caress and a whisper, it is dream drapery and dew-cloth and drifting meadow of air. And it is endlessly admired and adored.

The Words: We, when we feel, evaporate. We breathe ourselves out and gone...Does Time, as it passes, really destroy? It may rip the fortress from its rock; but can this heart, that belongs to God, be torn from Him by circumstance? Are we as fearfully fragile as Fate would have us believe? Can we ever be severed from childhood’s deep promise? Ah, the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance. (A Year With Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, April selections)

The Color: Xanadu: It's a Chinese city, a 1980 musical flop, and the gray-green color of the philodendron leaf. A Year With Rilke: April the knowledge of impermanence that hauntsour days is their very fragrance 96”x72” oil on canvas