“A Moment Composed” 4×4, oil on canvas Buy Now
I usually treat Sunday nights like a weekly new year’s eve. With lofty and numerous resolves for the week ahead, I go to sleep with the best of intentions for the future.
Last night I had big plans for the paintings I was going to paint, the house I was going to clean, the meals I was going to plan and then execute, the miles I was going to run.
But this morning I remembered what I’ve really wanted to do, the intention that started this 31 day practice and has been calling to me ever since. I want to do less not more. Fewer haphazard strokes and distracted paintings, attention to the task at hand and not on the one down the line.
Relax, I told myself this morning. Relax, I reminded myself as I wrapped and prepared a large painting for shipping, a task I usually detest.
Relax, I whispered as I painted an image of a bird I rarely see taking breaks– a bird whose wings, beating faster than I can perceive, become just a blur of grey against the oak trees in my backyard.
I got the title for this painting from a beautiful poem I discovered in my less-hustle-and-bustle-more-being-present state:
Hummingbird
By Mark Roper
Not just how
it hung so still
in the quick of its wings,
all gem and temper
anchored in air;
not just the way
it moved from shelf
to shelf of air,
up down, here there,
without moving;
not just how it flicked
its tongue’s thread
through each butter-yellow
foxglove flower
for its fix of sugar;
not just the vest’s
electric emerald,
the scarf’s scarlet,
not just the fury
of its berry-sized heart,
but also how the bird
would soon be found
in a tree nearby,
quiet as moss at the end
of a bare branch,
wings closed around
its sweetening being,
and then how light
might touch its throat
and make it glow,
as if it were the tip
of a cigarette
smouldering
on the lip of a world,
whose face,
in the lake’s hush
and the stir of leaves,
might appear
for a moment
composed.