I find portals a necessity in 2025. I’ve cared about their whereabouts and found entry points since I started my art practice. I like squares and perpendiculars but round objects—ovals and circles and curvaceous loops and elliptical marks are beyond curiosity. In their creation I get lost. A flow, a rhythm, a movement takes shape on the substrate. I’m fully aware of the imaginal theatrics. In the process of the making, I give in to the intuitive swipe of the brush in my hand, the dip in and out of pools of paint, the wash of colors looping and twirling. The bigger the substrate, the bigger the portal, the more apt one is too likely to enter, for a moment. Give me a breather from the 24-7 news, the imminent health scare, the mundane tasks of my day . . . the break-up of this and that. Just a moment to hold on to that other place we are invited to inhabit. Always.
My Art: “Going Through.” Created on April 3, 2025. Canson mixed media journal, acrylic paints, graphite, oil pastels.
Note: I navigate this life inside the struggles of whatever I face (personally, culturally, globally) and yet, hold on to an underlying trust that a light shines through this portal (in me, over there, next to you) which is not mine to set ablaze or to keep going. I’m invited to participate in its generating light. Herein is the mystery, the uncertain certainty, that riddles my faith. For this, I am grateful.
My Art: “Into The Mystery.” Created on September 18, 2024. Mixed media paper, acrylic paint, oil pastel, variety of brushes.
Note: This painting suggests, we, humans, are so caught up in the problematic worlds we create, have grown accustomed to, that we rarely take stock of the portals of mystery all around us. This portal may be one that gives us the courage and strength to take on the personal and community grit and service needed to ward off the stinky rhetoric, the cruel consequences of inhumane practices and policies that seek to find its way with and in us as we walk alongside others, some of whom are defenseless and undefended. It may give us something altogether different. But this is the point—We were made to be wed to mystery in the ordinariness of our days and to live out its unfolding together. We were made to generate, create, find ways toward human nourishment and flourish-ment in the day by day. We have a lifetime to navigate these holdings. Let’s keep at it.
This week be encouraged and encourage each other to find and step inside portals of grace, service, gratitude, mystery, light . . . it takes practice. Renewal. More practice. They come in all shapes and sizes, generously stooping toward the common good for the cosmos and the earth. Sometimes it takes an invitation to join someone else’s and be alongside. Portals are free for the finding. And they are everywhere you are. Everywhere. No strings attached.