Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

A REMINDER OF BEAUTY

I received a newsletter from a dear friend, Terrill Welch, two days ago. Terrill is an artist residing on Mayne Island, British Columbia. The newsletter contained photographs of works in progress and photographs of the shoreline and natural life found along the trails she walks. I confess that these photographs left me with a deep longing to return to the island, to feel and connect again to the spirit of the place where I lived for three months. Since returning to the States, I have felt a sense of exile. Canada, the rich multicultural society, environment, and lifestyle are more suitable to my nature. Terrill’s vibrant art, her heartful and soulful connection stirs and inspires me.

After reading Terrill’s newsletter and then re-reading it this morning, I asked myself, “What is your passion?” The question began forming yesterday following a conversation with my friend and brother Changding Hsiau. We had briefly discussed a chapbook I mentioned to him months ago. The poems are based on classical Chinese poetry. They are composed in English and will be translated into Chinese. I had put aside working on the poetry earlier this year to paint and to concentrate on the American political and moral crisis.

Time is a gift rather than a commodity. I have to allow the question “What is your passion” to direct my attention, remind me of the beauty of life, and allow myself to express it creatively.

We, and this is true of myself, often fail to see the details of what is before us. The detail of shapes and the variation of the shades of colors, how the sunlight tinctures flowering petals of a forsythia, or a tree trunk and its branches heavy with buds. One of the lessons I have learned from Terrill about art, and I am only now beginning to understand, fully appreciate and apply to my painting, and which also has application to my poetic work, is the compressed value range. This means maintaining the vale of or lightness of the colors fairly consistent while allowing for changes in the hue and saturation of the subtle shifts in color. We live in a world of subtle shifting colors, a wealth of beauty. “Two peas in a pod” is how we tend to look at things, and too often people. We tend to see that all things are similar and indistinguishable from another in our daily rush. When we slow down, take the time to open our eyes to see with an artistic eye, and we can connect and experience the beauty of life. The artistic eye is the eye of wonder.

I express this in a stanza of my poems titled “Twilight At Changuang Temple.”

Long ago I passed through the Dragon Door,

My path to the gate now sprouts mounds of grass,

To cherish the empty and the pure,

To let my body dissolve into the thousands selves

To become myself and my soul to become as the

Liwu River washing away endless torment and regret.

The artistic eye, the eye of wonder, is the eye of a child that resides within us. As we, and I include myself, “mature,” we easily become turtles or clams living within a shell. Narrow-visioned, passing through life, the sea washing over us. We accumulate things and want more. People enter our lives and depart. But all this time, in all we “experience,” there is a child whose voice we seldom hear, whose eyes we seldom open.

Two paragraphs jumped out at me in Terrill’s letter.

“I find that it is significant to capture this quieter process of sea and shore meeting… more of a slow caress than a heartbeat and breath rhythm of rolling waves.

Then I spot this cluster of shells floating in an immediately enthralling composition. This I can see putting to paint on a canvas! I have seen these before but never so visually and sensory complete and, most importantly, I can get close enough to document my discovery.”

The challenge of life, is to use Terrill’s words, “to go deeper rather than further.… deep learning and observation is as limitless and endless as travelling and gathering a breadth of understanding.”

We live in a world of subtle shifting colors, a wealth of beauty.

The beauty around us asks us for a response to the question “What is your passion?”      

• Cover painting by John Russell, “The Clearing in the Forest.”
• I encourage readers to visit Terrill Welch’s Online Art Gallery
• Watch David Mankin in Cornwall, England 14 minute video
• Deborah Osberg has two 15 minutes videos available that, like Mankin’s, outlines her philosophy of art. These are informative and beautifully filmed.