|| guardian of the cosmic wind ||
I may not always be cosmic traveling but when I do…
||guardian of the cosmic wind|| 120cm x 150cm acrylic on raw canvas
When I start a painting, I don’t usually plan on visualizing the cosmos. It’s just what happens and somehow I keep finding myself in these moments when matter starts organizing itself again after being scattered. It’s really quite thrilling to watch…watching paint dry.
This painting started with my new combo of sienna and burnt orange poured into a lavender tinted white on the raw cotton canvas. Of course with no plan, just the way I always do. But partway through I recognized what I was looking at. John and I have been watching Ulysses 31, a 1981 French-Japanese animated version of The Odyssey set in deep space which ticks every single one of my tv-junkie boxes. Ulysses, Telemachus, Yumi and No-No are cast asunder in the galactic void after angering the gods. In each episode, the crew stumbles across planets, nebulae, dying stars, and of course the very familiar characters from the Odyssey while they are navigating their way home without a map.
Watching them cross all that dark space without a map, I recognized the shape of it. I know something about journeys that don’t have a fixed endpoint. Leaving our life in the US and not knowing what came after it. Stepping back from being visible, then deciding to be visible again, on my own terms, years later. None of those had a map. They had a direction and a lot of dark space in between.
So this painting isn’t the crossing. It’s the moment after, when the scattered pieces start finding each other and becoming something you can name. It’s more like a star nursery with gas and dust swirling and collapsing as it takes shape. The sienna masses are the fire caught mid-combustion, the chromatic black is the primordial goo. The purple, green, and yellow are all the star stuff bits, laying in wait to join the dance.
I painted this while feeling my way through the not-knowing, watching it become something beautiful.
It leaves me breathless.
