Journey to Love with the Stars of Egypt's Embrace

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

~ Oscar Wilde

And a new one begins…

The heart ashore… the stars above… the temples within…

My parents are ailing and now more than ever I am becoming aware of the cries of healing of the past, from generations before to the present. Where things are both mine and not mine, yet often feel like they are more than mine… Mine to alchemize.

To transform from lead into gold. The task is both easy and not… it is all in the willingness to become aware, to accept rather than deny, and then love all that is and was.

Painting and writing are becoming my best friends, for it is through the taking it from the inside to expressing it on the outside, in colour, in strokes, in words that may not make sense to anyone else, that I become more whole than I was.

Today, I take to the panel the desire to practice the act of self-love, because it is only through LOVE that we can liberate our hearts… and creative expression is the way.

I wonder if our longing to touch the divine is really our need to fully love ourselves – beauty and warts, light and shadow – all of it in its entirety?

“Nothing is wrong, nothing is wasted, nothing is neurotic, nothing is disowned, everything is possible in art”

~ Julia Cameron

I had a burning desire this morning to collage onto this newly primed panel some papyrus sheets I’ve had for years. I don’t know how much, if any, of the texture will be noticeable as the piece progresses because I paint with thick layers… but it’s there… the ancient Egyptian Goddesses and their temples have been invited to play with us…

Papyrus is a thick type of paper material originally prepared in ancient Egypt from the pithy stem of a water plant, used in sheets throughout the ancient Mediterranean world for writing or painting on and also for making rope, sandals, and boats.