RECAP OF THE NIGHT:
The spirit of love in the room was palpable. The night, in retrospect, a blur. So many faces, new and familiar, graced the gallery and I've never had a better time. Many drinks consumed and many art pieces perused...and even purchased. Everyone I talked to after the show talked about the love they experienced and felt and that is my biggest takeaway and memory from the evening. I was blessed to be a part of that night. HUGE thanks to all who were in attendance and I'll see you at the next one.
ABOUT THE SHOW:
Throughout 2014 - 2015 in my neighborhood called Highland Horizon, I have been working tirelessly, painting pieces that possess a common theme - the horizon. I started painting these big abstract pieces, some colorful, some muted, but all with an intense passion and emotion, unlike I have ever experienced before. The strange thing is that I felt they just weren't finished even when I thought I was done, if that makes any sense...they needed something, a focal point, an anchor, and that anchor was the horizon line. I felt it needed this sort of weight to draw the viewer's eye to a certain point on the painting. Once I brushed that line onto each piece, something just clicked in my spirit that it was finished. It was only after I had about 4 or 5 pieces turn out this way that I picked up on what was happening and decided to base a show on the horizon-themed abstract canvases, which comprised over 50 pieces. Then it hit me pretty quickly that these all were produced within a year while living in the Highland Horizon neighborhood and that's when it all came together. It was unintentional but I thought the coincidences between the name of the neighborhood we moved into and the common occurrence of the horizon line in my latest pieces were pretty cool. This horizon subject really speaks to me spiritually as well. I've found that in my life, if I concentrate and focus too much on the things right in front of me, the stresses and challenges brought up in everyday life, then I get bogged down in them and that opens the door to melancholy. I read an article and in it was a Navy Captain lecturing a new recruit about getting his sea legs to overcome seasickness. The Captain said that in order to not become sea sick you have to keep your eyes fixed upon the horizon line...he said it is when you start to focus on the waves around you is when you start to feel really badly. To me that's a metaphor for keeping my eye on the things of eternal importance. It's when I get distracted by, and start to look directly at, the waves, which are the stresses and worries of everyday life, is when I start to get anxious and even depressed sometimes. But when I look up, when I fix my gaze upon truth, that steady, stable and stationary horizon line, then things change in me for the better. That is when peace arrives.