I made the paperfold below about a week ago. I am still affected by it. There is a beauty here, a timelessness, a spiritual content, which I struggle to even put into words. In the front you can see a pyramid shape. On the left you can see another form. I think of it as the Holy Spirit.
Like many of my paperfolds, this one puts me in mind of the desert, which takes me straight to spiritual reflection:
"Drawn deeper into the desert, the early monks were drawn deeper into solitude, deeper into themselves, and at the same time deeper into community, deeper into God, the ground of being, and thus closer to the ground of being within us, for the depth of being of each of us is as strange and alien, yet hauntingly as familiar, as desert solitude...Spiritually and psychologically, the desert was a point of balance, of creative tensions and paradoxes. Going out to the barren desert is going into the fertile source of spiritual life....Contemplatiom opened (monks) to discovery of themselves, which entails both acceptance of oneself and realizing that one's being is utter nothingness unless it's base is God." From Introduction, PAPHNUTIUS translated by Tim Vivian
As an abstract artist I have been shocked to discover how making abstract art has led me to spiritual reflection/insight, prayer, to solitude, to self discovery, self emptying, personal and so much more! continue to be dumbfounded by how making abstract art leads me to self emptying, to prayer, to God.
When I started painting in 2012 I thought I painted to say something. Turns out I paint to receive, to learn, to be filled...! Who knew: My whole art journey is connected to my faith journey!
