Illustrate The Energy [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

This afternoon I received a lovely email from John. He asked permission to use an image from my website, “…to illustrate what angel energy might look like.” I was delighted. The image he wanted to use was of my palette, a fantastic mess of swirling, colliding color.

It occurred to me that my palette is perhaps where I do my most honest painting (the action as opposed to a finished piece). I mix color on top of color. It’s a terrible habit and, if it becomes public knowledge, I’ll be banished from the art league: I never clean my palette because I love the paint build-up. It’s a history of the dance. It also grinds down my brushes. I love working with rough worn brushes. Don’t tell anyone.

“Don’t you love that he called your palette ‘Energy!'” Kerri said. I do. It brought to mind Jakorda Rai, a healer, a Balian that is significant in my life. He was a painter, too. His paintings were visual captures of the movement of energy in the body. A mix between solid structure and whirling flow. Color streams that resembled photos of distant galaxies. His pieces were unceremoniously tacked to the walls of the hut where he saw his patients. Spiritual healing; the art of moving energy stuck in an eddy. The art of regaining natural flow. Natural pace.

We walked through the city as night fell. Dinner was done and we had a train to catch. Kerri snapped photos along the way. The river. Reflections in the buildings. The ceiling of the train station. As she focused her camera, I watched the people hustling to the rhythm of the city. The pace is fast. The gestures emphatic. Aggressive. People racing to “get there”. Never here. It’s easy to get caught in the undercurrent. Hyped up. Swept away. I thought of Georgia O’Keeffe’s city paintings. Towering buildings reaching to the heavens. Hard linear thrusts obstructing the sky. “That’s why New Mexico was so appealing to her,” I thought. A different energy. Softer. Deeper. Ancient. Less eddy. Human scale and slower. A place to be still and meditate.

As we boarded the train Kerri said, “I like visiting the city but I like it better because we can leave it.”

I thought of a phrase I’d read earlier in the day in The Marginalian: “…our golden age of compulsive productivity at the expense of presence…” [William James]. “Sometimes it’s too much energy through the wire,” I quipped, suddenly yearning to move to New Mexico and walk the arroyos where Georgia painted. “Nothing between the artist and the stars,” I whispered, “…angel energy.”