Shadow Play With My Painting and Venetian Window Blinds.

 

I love how sunlight visits the rooms of my new home at various hours of the day. It splays a golden light and invites shadows cast by the Venetian blinds to come and play. Together they stripe the walls, the plants and all that falls within their path. 

Last Friday, I left my most recent artwork on my desk to dry. When I returned, it was striped with horizontal lines of sunlight and shadow. The sun was lowering as night’s curtain slowly unfurled to drape the sky and so spilled its light and cast shadows across tabletops and chairs.

When I raised my watercolor painting up to see if it had dried, the lines grew starker and more defined. In a flash, I thought I saw water wash over a blueberry sea inhabited by fifteen floating herring. I was captivated by the thought of the animated ocean rippling across the paper and causing my painted fish and blueberries to appear swimming up and down its waves.

I held the painting within my right hand and my camera in my left. I stretched my right arm out and snapped one and then two photos. I love both images. One is above at the opening of this post and one is just below:

Next, I moved the artwork up and down with one hand and turned on my phone's video recorder with the other. When I viewed the short video moments later, I truly saw the herring and blueberries swimming. Below is a much shortened version of that video:

Art is such a gift to our lives. The curiosity, wonder and emotions it invites expand our individual humanity. Crafting this short video and the taken photos brought me sweet joy. Lines from Charles Bukowski’s poem “A Vote For The Gentle Light” now sing their words to me:

“you must remain yourself

you must open the curtains

or the blinds

or the windows 

to the gentle light 

to the joy,”

 

⚓

© SSD