My beloved friend came through the operation fine and hopefully she is now cancer-free. Such a relief.
Frosty sun-dazzled morning here in the mountains. Later today I am going to visit a friend who is an artist and who has occupied herself since the loss of her husband a year ago by painting small canvases that have helped her transmute suffering into art. works of mourning and restoration, to acknowledge bereavement and at the same time to celebrate and remember the goodness of a long marriage. She began painting three weeks after the funeral, stayed up late at night mixing paints and making false starts and then carried her easel out into the courtyard with its grey lavender bushes, silver-green of teucrium mounds, boulders patterned with lichen, and the dark oblong pool. There she learned to work with the morning light behind her, filled her canvases with the shapes of stones and leaves and water, slowly found that figures emerged, shadowy and clasping one another, recalled gestures and loved places.
The power of art and beauty to console and heal us.
This too: the power of art to transcend and transform our deepest sorrows and joys. Poet Charles Simic writing about Poetry and Utopia in the NYRB describes a similar alchemy, the ways in which we find meaning in art and how that art may outlast us, go on speaking to those who come after:
A young man in a small town in Patagonia or in Kansas reads an ancient Chinese poet in a book he borrowed from the library and falls in love with a poem, which he reads to himself over and over again as the summer night is falling. With each reading he brings the voice of the dead poet to life. For one unforgettable moment, he steps out of his own cramped self and enters the lives of unknown men and women, seeing the world through their eyes, feeling what they once felt and thinking what they once thought. If poetry is not the most utopian project ever devised by human beings, I don’t know what is.
To step out of the cramped self and lose oneself in art made by others who, like us, tried to give meaning to terror and sadness. Making a place for hope.
I am so glad your friend has found such a beautiful way to walk through her grief.
The paintings are so lovely Mary Christine and I hope she will go on to paint about many other aspects of her life.
I know it to be true that art can help to transform sadness. Sadness has been a big part of my recent experience, and a friend told me, “when you’re sad, make art”. I’ve never had much artistic skill beyond music, but I became interested in painted furniture and am trying my hand at it. Practicing what I will eventually paint on my piece has become more fun than I imagined, and I’ve decided even if the work doesn’t turn out as well as I’d like, the enjoyment has been worth it, and the learning I take from the first project can only improve the next. At least it takes your mind away from your sadness for awhile.
Any kind of cathartic and creative activity can become art for us Kathleen and the enjoyment is what matters for most of us. I once did an art retreat where the teacher pointed us that we were going to spend three days making marks on a sheet of paper or canvas and nobody was allowed to praise or crit anyone’s work. So we painted in silence, freed of the anxiety to perform and those images were so intensely pleasurable and personal. Take care my friend, you are in my thoughts and prayers.
Western medicine is just catching up with the emotional and spiritual side of illness. The cancer center now has classes to encourage creative expression. So healing and soothing….
Most of us need a chance to play or make things Lou, it is like a return to childhood and can be so energising or soothing.
Stepping out of the cramped self…this is also where meetings help me. Connecting to the 12 step group who have a desire to quit drinking one day at a time. The human connection is important for me realizing I am not alone in my struggles.
Me too, Dee — that is another way for us to forget self and feel empathy and togetherness, a feeling of belonging.
I’m glad that your friend came through the operation. It is my hope that I won’t be mired in grief should I lose another person who is as close as my heart beat. I have lost both parents, but the loss of a spouse or child has to be the hardest of all.
Syd, there are some losses we dread — and hopefully we need not face them for a long time to come. I am so glad my friend is doing well.