Becoming truly alive…

Becoming truly alive…

I had recently completed my first passion project painting—something that became so much more than I imagined it could be. It was a very intense experience over several weeks, but it was also incredibly rewarding—liberating in fact. Creating a life changing epiphany, revealing that only by living in full appreciation of each and every day do we experience true happiness. A happiness not dependent on some future desired outcome.

Becoming Truly Alive—is an ecstatic expression of living joyfully, celebrating the freedom that comes when you free yourself of worries and live in the moment. Wake up! Make right now the most wonderful moment of your life!

“This is now. Now is.

Do not postpone till then.

Spend the spark of iron on stone.

Sit at the head of the table.

Dip your spoon in the bowl.

 

Seat yourself next to your joy,

and have your awakened soul pour wine.

 

Branches in the spring wind,

easy dance of jasmine and cypress.

 

Cloth for green robes

has been cut from pure absence.

 

You are the tailor,

settled among his shop goods, quietly sewing.”

~ Rumi

Becoming Truly Alive by Kiernan Antares

Becoming Truly Alive 30×30 in by Kiernan Antares

 

Sometimes it’s a hit, and sometimes it’s a miss…

Sometimes it’s a hit, and sometimes it’s a miss…

“Come out here where the roses have opened.

Let soul and world meet.”

~ Rumi

It’s not all sugar and spice and everything nice. Nope.

Sometimes nothing works. The question hanging in the air… do I scrap it and begin again, or keep at it, hoping for the flash of genius that ties it all together?

The photo in the post is a work-in-progress detail shot – of a second piece I started up, when the first one was going deeper and deeper into the ugly phase, and I had to switch things up.

I kind of like the play on colours in this close-up. Sadly though, not so much in the over all piece.

Why oh why did this song suddenly pop into my head… maybe we all needed a little pick me up… Enjoy!

 

On Wings of Love…

On Wings of Love…

“Soul of this world,

no life, no world remain,

no beautiful men and women longing.

Only this ancient love

circling the holy black stone of nothing, where the lover is the love,

the horizon and everything within it.”

~ Rumi

It’s the oddest thing, after all this time living, breathing and painting with vibrant colour, to suddenly find comfort, inspiration, grace, mystery, and awe in tones of black and white… in the contrast… there must lie something… some element of life and all it encompasses.

Can I describe it? It’s like I look upon the painting and in the gentle blends, the swooping strokes and scratched in markings that something enters my heart. It is gentle. It is peace. Yet it is also alive with movement and energy.

There seems to be an elegance about it too, somehow.

I’ve become obsessed with exploring it, which I will until it fills me to the brim and then empties me out.

Wings of Love | 30 x 30in | Acrylic on Gallery Wood Panel

What do you think of the black and white? What does it reveal to you, or does it speak of mystery? I would love to hear, please leave me a comment below.

Kiernan xo

“Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.”
~ Ivan Pavlov

 

Swishing and swirling and rising up…

Swishing and swirling and rising up…

“It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.”

~ Rebecca West

Caught up in the swirling waves of the sea, with patterns clashing and colliding, I find my inner walls of resistance are crumbling down in rapid succession.

All the while, a passion project idea has been steadily growing and taking hold of my heart in an undeniable way. It’s shining a light on a path of great expansion, one I am feeling more and more ready (excited) to undertake.

What about you? Is there something calling, urging you to grow into a bigger you? Is there a swirling mass of YOU ready to rise from the sea?

Rumi, beloved Rumi, never fails to create moments of awe as I call upon him for his thoughts on each new painting.

“Light again, and the one who brings light.
Change the way you live.

From the ocean-vat, wine-fire in each cup.
Two or three of the long-dead wake up.
Two or three drunks become lion hunters.

Sunlight washes a dark face.
The flower of what is true opens in the face.
Meadow grass and garden ground grow damp again.
A strong light like fingers massages our heads.
No dividing these fingers from those.

Draw back the lockbolt.
One level flows into another.
Heat seeps into everything.
The passionate pots boil.
Clothing tears into the air.
Poets fume shreds of steam,
never so happy as out in the light.”

~ Rumi

Can you see it? Can you feel it?

Kiernan xo

Art Transforms Worlds within Worlds

Art Transforms Worlds within Worlds

Painting is not always about creating something of beauty. Sometimes it’s about an artist pouring something unknown onto the canvas. This unknown may be a feeling that is unable to be articulated any other way than through colour or the act of creating something with our hands. Sometimes it’s a calling from an inward and/or an outward source.

A pull. A calling. An irrepressable urge.

It could be in response to something the artist is experiencing. It could be an attempt to understand or convey something bigger.

Imagine for a moment, that in the act of creation – something is transformed in this unknown kaleidoscope. This is the power of art… it transforms from within and without… it brings something into the world that carries an energy that heals and affects us on a cellular level.

Imagine for a moment that it takes the whole of a life and repatterns it, makes sense of it and integrates a wholeness that might not otherwise be experienced. And, what if in that one transformation it sends feelers or waves of energy out into the world – to touch the hearts of others.

Art informs. Art heals. Art transforms…the one who is creating it and the ones who reflect upon it.

This recent piece ‘Intimate Knowing of the Soul’ is a painting that called from the depths of someplace within my soul. I would also say that it was called forth from some other place.

I had many a conversation with Rumi, with my childhood and what brought this person to experience the mystical force of Egypt. Retracing my steps through a pilgrimage in South Africa… to today as an artist with messages of hope, love and the reverence of the power of the unseen and the unknown.

Intimate Knowing of the Soul went through a great deal of transformation with many many layers. It looks intense, deep and chaotic. But, it is a weaving together of lives and energy. It is an integration of wholeness.

It is also the promise of exciting new things to come, because as we weave together the past and the future into the NOW, we expand, grow stronger, and we are able to hold so much more of life in our hands, our hearts, our minds and bodies.

As this painting came to completion this message or mantra has descended (or ascended) into my thoughts and awareness…

TO LOVE NOT HATE…whatever is appearing before us, drop into our heart and be love.