Diane Williams

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The banyan tree knows

Rock and bone will turn to sand

Take comfort in this.

 

I read The Ancient Tree, never hearing of Nhat Chi Mai, who died 36 years ago. Nine days before I began the work, a white parakeet landed on the Jacobs ladder in front of my studio. The bird became my inspiration, singing for me, while I struggled with the guilt over isolating myself in the studio. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq was raging. Many of my peers were among the crowds of protestors, and I felt a pressure to respond politically. Intentions, moving on an instinct of survival, revealed a new resolve to my internal struggle and the paintings became my form of protest-a new voice of spirit.

How could a woman dead for 36 years, speak again through my work? What pathways or bridges connected us? For many years I have contemplated what remains after we die. I painted a figure that is composed of space, and titled it after a Rilke poem, A Ghost Though Invisible, Still is Like a Place. There is a quality of the personal that extends far beyond our physical existence, just as painting can extend beyond the personal to the sublime.

The IIII Seasons is about the constancy of change, and the rhythm of cycles. It is born from the collective unconscious. The realm of creation is pre-verbal, allowing responses that are vibration instead of linear. Like the white bird showing up on your porch, we must be ready to celebrate a simple interruption as a gift of the universal, while we transform like a whisper.