Mystic Passage

Mystic Passage 24 x 30 Mixed Media on Canvas

I have had some questions about Double Arch which is the basis for Dawn Banishing the Night below. Above is my first attempt at Double Arch before I started seeing figures in the rock. Or maybe I should say before I started acknowledging on canvas the figures I saw on the rock. This painting also shows the top of the forward arch and a bit of the sky below. I wanted the sense of a cave in the latest painting so cut the top of the arch off and centered the focus on the goddess figure on the second arch.

Mystic Passage was also a "landmark" painting for me in that it is one of the first where I began to extensively use pouring and metallic highlights and spiral stars. It has a prominent place behind my desk in my studio to always remind me to move forward. I wrote the poem below about the process of painting Dawn Banishing the Night but named it Mystic Passage because it is also true of this picture.

Mystic Passage

I was so into the paint today that I was gone
Every fiber of my being
Layered one color upon another
On a surface outside myself
Inside.

Sometimes it is just a painting I create
This craft I can do so mechanically
Today it was like giving birth
To a reality only I see
Given to you.

None of the words people speak or write
Seem to apply to what occurs
When I am unconscious of all
But the brush in my hand
The paint.

As if the paint pours from my soul
Down my veins to my fingertips
Appearing by magic
On once white canvas
A life.

Figures and shapes and visions emerge
Scenes I was not conscious I dreamt
I was so into the paint today
It was hard to pull out
Some of me
I left behind.

(c) J. Binford-Bell

Look here on Creative Journey tomorrow for another multi-blog poetry tour.