I've been experimenting lately with some different forms of expression - and I'm not talking about swearing. I already do that. In more than one language. [It's a good year for that, right?]
I'm talking about poetry and abstract expressionism. I think it started when I decided I needed to get really familiar with
Mary Oliver's poetry. I've read 6 or 7 of her books and collections in the past couple of months and am just finishing her 'Devotions'. It's been a revelation.
Mary Oliver took her notebook and pencil with her every morning on a walk through the surrounding woodland. She wrote what she saw. I take a walk every morning through my surrounding woodland and so much of what she has written about are things that I have experienced myself. She turned these everyday sacred experiences into poetry.
My grandmother was a poet. Her work was posthumously published in a book titled,
'Transition'. I knew my grandmother very well and we discussed her writing, even when I was very young. I, myself, never really 'got' poetry until my first daughter was born. I looked into that tiny face and she smiled at me - and it was like the sun coming out - and that's when I realized what the poets were trying to express. When I read my grandmother's book, having known her myself, having experienced the same places with her, I realized the power of poetry as a story-telling device. This is how she was able to tell the stories that proper women didn't talk about in polite society. She never talked about her growing up and her feelings about her relationships, but it was all there in her poetry.
In the fine art world, abstract expressionism is another of those powerful story-telling devices. Sometimes, when the words aren't there, the symbols and feelings can surface on the paper.
This year has been one of those 'no words' years. A year of such enormous change and challenge that sometimes I found myself communicating best in my own poetry and abstraction. The piece above is one of those explorations.
How has your season been? Have you found different ways of talking about it?
