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Flowing from Within 36 x 22" , watercolor on stretched paper sold
Imagine the last time you were really thirsty and a drink of water gave you life. Imagine the last time you came in from working in the garden or returning from a strenuous walk or run on a hot, humid day and a tepid shower made you refreshed and clean. Nothing is more extravagant than water which is, of course, one of the elements essential to life. Biblically, water has reference to many things: a cleansing agent, quenching thirst, renewal, baptism, purification, life and forgiveness. When this piece was painted, I was just moving out of a stagnant, sterile, blocked place. I hadn’t been producing any work because of limited movement due to foot surgery which kept me immobile and unable to drive for weeks. I was homebound and in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar place. My days became reflective and literary as I read pages and pages of written work. My expectations of healing were not realized. I became critical, frustrated and sluggish because the surgeon’s projected healing time wasn’t what was happening in real time. When I did get back to my studio, this is the first piece I painted. Though this work had been “painted” on thumbnails and in my head for several months, it was a very liberating act to see it appear. I started by washing lots of plain water over the paper, soaking it. After waiting until some water had been absorbed, I applied pigment with a brush, letting the manganese, ultramarine and pthalo blues bleed and blend into one another. Then I added violet for contrast. After waiting a little longer, I picked up the frame and tilted it side to side, and up and down to let the colors run down, even spraying the very top with a fine mist of water. This made the water literally run down the paper and washed the top portion back to the white of the paper. After watching the colors run down the paper for awhile, I laid the frame down to settle. Then I picked up other brushes full of the same blues and violet and splattered these pigments on top of the wash. It was my expression of a cleansing, a washing and living, moving water. Though there was some direction because of tilting the frame, essentially this was a very uncontrolled work allowing the pigment to go where it wanted to go. I let out a sigh when it was completed. This was a renewal painting for me. As I re-read the scripture references I previously had in mind for this piece, it truly became an expression of releasing the stagnancy of my own heart. The image of water became living water to me, like the Holy Spirit moving and washing away those pent up, sterile feelings of limitations and house-recovery days. It was almost like a cleansing and a re-birth from death to life as in baptism or a surge of new strength, an impulse of joy, God’s presence. It was indeed an essential element to my life as an artist. If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. John 7:37-38 Further References: ©copyright phyllis thomas, 2008
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