This morning it dawned on me (no pun intended) that, within the given boundaries, the painting process is about a relationship between myself, the landscape, and time. Each of these aspects is more malleable than I might have supposed.

As this relationship becomes more and more the focus, I feel released from prescribed notions of what I am doing. I feel freer and more in the moment. Which is the wonder of relationship– it has the capacity to free us from set ideas. Whether it is with other people or with the landscape and time. We must allow ourselves to come into reciprocal relationship if we wish to become more Conscious and live from the fullness of our own being.

This makes me think of the hardening quality of strict adherence to ideology– an idea or set of ideas that, when adopted strictly, hardens the heart and other sensibilities of being in the living, breathing world.

It also makes me think of the potential power of storytelling, which is, above all, a living reciprocal relationship (thanks, Laura Simms). It opens us to the malleable living space of the heart, where we are free to have an individual experience while also being part of a group of people with whom we are at one with at that particular place and time.

Not long after I did the painting, I happened to see a bird soaring in the distance– perhaps a raven. I was seeing the bird with the eyes of the heart. This is a very good sign. It means that the process of doing the paintings is moving me in the direction I want to go– to see with the eyes of the heart, to hear with the ears of the heart, and so imbue all of the senses with the quality of the heart.