Coming Back to the Page

Sometimes when we are too long away from the page we fear it. Or maybe we fear ourselves. That our absence has taken us too far. How will we find our way back?

It is a form of trust to return to the emptiness and put our color down once more. Trust, that we still exist, that time has not stolen the core of us.

The weeks have taken me away. Too many things pressing. No chance to touch pastel to paper. And this morning I felt afraid. What was to fear? I found myself once again, there in the colors, speaking spirit and shape out of my soul into yours, even into mine.


"Falling" in soft pastels. By L.L. Barkat.

Morning with the Moon

She rises each day, before her sister... before obligations and breakfast, chatter and business. The night before she has looked at the sky. What are its nuances? She carries them into quiet morning moments. If the sky has disappointed with a blank stare, she imagines color, shape.

I find her paintings when I pass through and she has gone on to other things... reading, sewing, building, chatting. I find them and drink in her morning with the moon.


Moon paintings by Sara, 12. Used with permission.


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Driftwood: A Philosophy of Art

I could think on this forever... what it says about the nature of art and artists... simply in story form...

But Grandmother sat in the magic forest and carved outlandish animals. She cut them from branches and driftwood and gave them paws and faces, but she only hinted at what they looked like and never made them too distinct. They retained their wooden souls, and the curve of their backs and legs had the enigmatic shape of growth itself and remained a part of the decaying forest. Sometimes she cut them directly out of a stump or the trunk of a tree. Her carvings became more and more numerous. They clung to trees or sat astride branches, they rested against the trunks or settled into the ground. With outstretched arms, they sank in the marsh, or they curled up quietly and slept by a root. Sometimes they were only a profile in the shadows, and sometimes there were two or three together, entwined in battle or in love. Grandmother worked only in old wood that had already found its form...

One time she found a big white vertebra in the sand. It was too hard to work but could not have been made any prettier anyway, so she put it in the magic forest as it was. She found more bones, white or gray, all washed ashore by the sea.

"What is it you're doing?" Sophia asked.

"I'm playing," Grandmother said.

Sophia crawled into the magic forest and saw everything her grandmother had done.

"Is it an exhibit?" she asked.

But Grandmother said it had nothing to do with sculpture...


Driftwood on Long Island, photo by L.L. Barkat. Excerpt from The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson, pp.14-15.

Anunciations

Life.

Life is.

Life is waiting.

This too shall find a name.

Life.

Life is.

Life is waiting.


"Anunciations" in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

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The Seeing

"I haven't written for years," he told me. A teacher himself, who is just now tentatively putting his work on the internet, he still suffers wounds from... a writing teacher's harsh critiques.

What? When did critique become an opportunity for destruction?

I watch my own girls growing, trying. I watch them play, write, draw, paint. I especially watch my big girl. So tentative, so dear. There are those who would seek to destroy. Don't paint that way. It's [terrible, terrible]...

Today, though, I rejoice. For one who sees my girl. She's a teacher hired especially to work with *someone else* in the room, but she sees my girl.

This note from her, upon encountering these drawings...

Sara,

Your drawings are beautiful. The costumes so clearly depict some of the qualities of each continent.

I thought you might be interested in borrowing this book. Although the title is "Fashion", a lot of the activities are about where we can get our inspiration for our art.

Mary

Thank God for Mary. And for all those who see, celebrate, and support, as she does.


'Happy Birthday to Cousin' acrylics and fabric painting by Sara, 12. Used with permission.

Las Noches Azules del Alma

I was meaning to translate some poetry. I was meaning to...

then the title caught me afresh...

blue nights of the soul.

How could I go on? Colors invaded, urgency overtook. Translation will wait. Set it aside. Capture this feeling...the blue nights of the soul.


'Blue Nights of the Soul', in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

Insect Art

This woman... she mesmerizes...

mirrors the creatures, makes me smile.


Caterpillar photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Qui Es in Caelis

At the last moment,

I lifted the paper, and so much

was the residue of soft pastels...

they drifted like ashes across the page...

and I thought, yes.


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'Qui Es In Caelis' (who is in heaven) soft pastel, in memory of September 11, by L.L. Barkat.

Deeper than Vision

Some say the artist is about vision. Seeing the world. Setting it down. And some say the artist is about telling. A story that needs to be heard.

Perhaps.

But when I hold these soft pastels, it is pure feeling that overtakes... surges through my fingertips, my whole being.

Maybe what takes shape is really something I've seen. Or a story that's been circling within my soul. But at the level of experience... me, these raw colors, this paper, these movements, art is deeper than vision. It is elemental soul.


'Aria' in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

Remembering the Heron

Some days my body just aches with sorrow. It is the way I am. Given to melancholy, given to tears. Oh, I can smile too, laugh the world away. I guess no matter what I feel, I feel it deeply.

On the hard days, I am finding that pushing color onto paper is a solace. Moving my hand in circles, embracing white space and giving it shape. It opens me.

Today I sat against my bed pillows. In dim light I worked with greens, blues, purples. I tried not to be afraid of black. It gives heart and depth to the page. With these colors, I remembered the heron on Long Island. Each morning I would watch him slowly make his way along the edge of the lake. Glide, glide, glide, jab... silver fish flipping, caught by sly elegance. Sometimes the heron would take flight. I loved that. It could make me smile in awe, or cry.


The Heron, in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

Touch

Soft pastels, packed, in the red canvas bag. Drawing paper packed too. Intentions to create.

I touch none of it while I'm gone. Instead, it is I who am touched by mornings and evenings, myriad wonders. Grains of sand, beach grasses, trees sculpted into permanent leaning beside the sea.

Perhaps what fascinates most is the light. How it moves through, illumines, casts shadows long and lacy or haunting. I have never paid so much attention to light before; each day brings a new kind, and I follow it over dunes, into seed pods, over pebbled waters. I reach to touch it, but instead it touches me.


Shell at Sunset photo, by L.L. Barkat.

I Am, White

See, God, this is who I am...

white
light
soul
mirroring
softening
imagining
white
light
soul

See, God, this is who I am...

'I Am, White' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat

I Am, Green

See, God, this is who I am...

green
spilling
soul
giving
laughing
trilling
green
spilling
soul

See, God, this is who I am...

'I Am, Green' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat

I Am, Red

See, God, this is who I am...

red
passion
soul
burning
bursting
whirling
red
passion
soul

See, God, this is who I am...

'I Am, Red' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat

I Am, Black

See, God, this is who I am...

dark
grasping
soul
churning
teetering
shattering
dark
grasping
soul

See, God, this is who I am...

'I Am, Black' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

I Am, Blue

See, God, this is who I am...

blue
sorrow
soul
reaching
raining
straining
blue
sorrow
soul

See, God, this is who I am...

'I Am, Blue' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

I Am

Prayer doesn't need to be complicated. Especially the kind uttered during personal struggle. Gerald May says it good. "See? This is who I am," he whispers before God. And leaves it at that.

I say it too... "See, God, this is who I am..." It's an act of opening, even if slight.

This picture is all the me's put together, into one I Am. It is layered— five separate works merged and ghosted. Me and me, and me and me and me. It is the whole, how God sees my soul, for better or worse. I will show you each piece in days to come. The faces of me I bring to prayer...

See, this is who I am...

'I Am' in soft pastel, retouched in Quark Xpress. By L.L. Barkat.

For

I met her on-line. Why should I be surprised? It's a gathering place where I've found such amazing people.

We did the social media dance (following, friending, linking) and one day I discovered she lives on my ocean side. Not just that, but she lives on my mountain, crosses my river. She has seen my cliffs perhaps as many times as I have, maybe more.

It only seemed fitting to have her to tea. So she came. Joan P. Ball graced my dining room. We ate scones. I drank green tea; she drank Harrod's Afternoon Blend. I ate chocolate. I don't remember if she did. Time raced. She slipped on her funky leather high-heeled sandals and was gone...

But not before giving me a piece of art made by her husband Martin. Black on wood, with a path that speaks of "Journey."

"I thought," she said. "The path. Your art pilgrimage. It seemed..."

It was.

Before she closed the door, we also spoke of gratitude. I told her how I'd "failed" at practicing it and instead had received it as a gift during my year of outdoor solitude. She said she thought "failing" at gratitude practice might be not an ending but a beginning, something to turn over in one's palm perhaps... to examine and handle afresh. Yes, perhaps.

I pondered this and decided I will not go back to gratitude lists— cold lines that took me nowhere. I will write "for" poems (as in, thankful for). I don't know how often. But here is the first...

"Today"

For life yet again,
and girls with long dark
hair

For you, sleeping there,
pulling me close in
dreams

For poetry that calls
to life beyond what
seems

to be. For me loved
by You. I should embrace
the blue.

Journey Art, by Martin. A gift from Joan P. Ball.

Thresholds Give

"Thresholds give, stars disorient," says the poem. It is a French poem, and I've had to do the work of translating to find the beauty. It is my way of trying to learn the language, and I feel so small in the face of my goal. A language feels endless, especially before you develop basic fluency.

So I must be patient, build layer upon layer, feel my way. It is the same with these pictures that visit me half-formed in the night. I have to take time to discover them once I sit down with paper and pastel. I feel afraid at every step, unsure of how to get where I'm going. Or how I will know when I've arrived.

The world feels upside down, constellations I knew flee the sky. I'm working in the abstract, something I've not done before. Drawing is no longer realism; it is simply color, form, movement. I turn the page and draw from different directions.

I don't know how I'll end. A feeling just comes at last, "It is finished." The threshold gives. And I lay my paper down.

Universe in pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

---

On a totally fun note, I just won a lovely t-shirt for posting to welcome InCourage. Out of over 200 entries! The stars are smiling and so am I.

Night Visions

I wake to darkness. This is nothing new. Sleep often eludes me in the deepest hours of night.

Turning to my left, I try to settle into the sheets, find my way back to slumber. My mind fills with visions, abstract. Picture after picture, until I feel I must be spinning. I will never remember all this, never be able to put it on paper. A desperate sense overcomes me, the way one must feel when grasping twine that is slipping away.

So I try to quiet myself and enjoy the parade... a vortex picture that looks something like a nest or a window to another world, green swirls that might be an ocean surging, a black whorl bleeding red into cobalt and purple... on and on. If I watch closely, maybe I will take some of these into the next day, find them under my pastels.

Then there will be the moment I wait for... after the picture is formed, like Adam-dust almost alive, I will choose where to shine the light and bring it to life, photograph the "it is good" and send it to cyberland, to you.

'Arise' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

Philip in the Dark

The room is hot, unbearably so. Air is thick with humidity. But we are here to listen.

Lights dim and we sit in darkness, only the musicians now illuminated. Rhythmic sounds like birth or a heartbeat fill the air, swell, recede, swell. My Littlest leans into me. I touch her forehead and tiny drops of water meet my fingertips... she is perspiring, wilting, even as the music lives, dances strange. In time, she finds her white cotton skirt, twists it, folds, fidgets. My eldest looks straight on, mesmerized, dreaming. ("It was sad and happy and hopeful all at the same time," she tells me afterwards.)

Now the music feels like birds underwater, rising. Or thousands of silver fish near-colliding in a song. Outside, lightning flashes as if on demand, now and again, now and again, speaking to the notes which swirl, spiral, pulse.

In my mind, I see the music taking form... slate blue swirls, turquoise dabs, emanating from a black gash. But I must take my girls home, put them to bed, ready myself for the next day, for a morning guest. So these visions in my mind must wait; with a sense that feels almost painful I hope to remember them until time allows, allows me to put down what it felt like to listen... to Philip in the dark.

Philip in the Dark, soft pastels, L.L. Barkat. Some of the music that inspired this piece: Philip Glass's "Glassworks"

Coming into Wild Roses

"Did you used to draw, Mommy?"

Why yes, I did. Before my career as a designer. Before someone paid me to do art and my love for it completely died.

So of course they ask, "Can we see? Do you still have your drawings?" It's not the paid stuff they want to see. They want to dig back, discover what I used to do, when no one was looking, when no one asked me to whip up a logo, cut and paste a brochure.

I go to the attic, dust off a brown leather zip case.

Here it is, a gathering of drawings and paintings from childhood and young adulthood. "You were really good!" they encourage me. Why, it's true; I wasn't half bad. I can't draw like that anymore though. And I have no desire to do so. Those were detailed drawings, painstaking, realistic.

That is past. Now I draw with my whole arm. I seem to be drawing in circles. I am pulled towards the abstract... something I never attempted before. It's as if I am coming into my own. I don't want to be an artist, like I said before. I'm just moving in circles, finding healing in colors, form, a kind of fluid dance. It is, in its way, a journey that takes courage. No promise of pay, no adherence to my previous ideas about art, just a knowing that this is the way I will pray and walk... as if into fields of wild, wild roses.

Wild Roses in soft pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

This post is to welcome InCourage, a gathering place for encouragement. Do you have a story to tell in celebration? Stop by and add your link.

OTHER LL POSTS TO WELCOME InCourage:
Baby, You Made My Decade, at Green Inventions
Nothing in Return, at Seedlings in Stone

Mary Claire's Accident

Mary Claire ripped her dress.

Or, more accurately, the chair ripped Mary Claire's dress. Mahogany wood snagged black chiffon, kissed a smooth ruffle... and...

But maybe it is not fair to blame this ruin on the wooden chair. Didn't Lydia want to know, How can a person sing like that? Wasn't she the child moved almost to tears by a song whose story she learned, but whose Italian words she couldn't even understand? Still, I was the one who called out to Mary Claire, "Come, the girls want to meet you."

With one quick movement she came. Sat next to my littlest child. Leaned in. Explained the vagaries of Carmen in gentle words the children could understand, without too much understanding. She came and asked them, "Do you like to sing?" She answered their questions. And, too, she told us how she sang in an opera before ever going to an opera. Mary Claire sat with us, with little girls, and she laughed and she whispered low and she gestured.

No, I am quite sure of it now. Mary Claire came. She came, and in coming, she ripped her dress.

Mary Claire's Dress, in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

Lydia's Treasures

I am not alone.

This is quite different from my year of solitude. Solitude brings clarity, yes. Hones observation. Probes the heart. But it is lonely. Some journeys are like that; so lonely you can taste your tears long after you've left the road.

But I am not alone on this art pilgrimage.

Last night, I brought little girls with me, my two daughters and a friend. To experience 'living art'... fine Italian food, ivory napkins and silver, and an opera singer. We laughed and talked. Lydia brought forth her treasures and set them on the table. "I found this under my bed, that at the AC Moore parking lot. I can't remember where the stone came from..."

And when the last song's final notes drifted off, practically the whole restaurant singing "Climb Any Mountain" with Mary Claire the opera singer, my eldest daughter was beaming. "The end, Mommy, I was trying to write it in my head as if we were in a story. I mean, what it felt like. Mommy, it was... it was like floating." Then she leaned into me, and that too was a treasure.

I am not alone. This is a together journey.





Photos: Mary Claire Sings; Girl Hands; Lydia's Treasures by L.L. Barkat

Pointless

"What's the point?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I answered. "But I think it's about spiritual growth."

"What's ART got to do with spiritual growth?"

This conversation is going nowhere. I cannot explain myself, the way an abstract painting cannot defend how very real it is despite its ambiguities. I cannot defend an art pilgrimage.

Surely, it's not something I will make money from (the major mark of worth in our culture); in fact, I will spend money... on art materials, donations, museum visits, maybe even a retreat or two. How can I explain that it's about showing up?

Showing up for what? Life, beauty, connection, healing, dreams. How can I explain that sometimes there is no other point than this: a journey calls and we answer?


Abstract Seascape, in gouache, by Sara B, 12. Used with permission.

Dragonfly Bush

I am walking now.

But when did I begin? Was it as a child with those first crayons, which I lost to the burning barrel one by one, watching them melt before my eyes because I'd left them out and this was my punishment? Was it in the fields picking wildflowers, hot pink and cornflower blue, to press between pages of a book? Or was it in middle-school art class, as I sat trying to capture things realistically with my pencil, while my friends went out the side door and got high with the teacher?

Where did this journey start? Was it when I morphed from editorial assistant to graphic designer, in a technical writing department, because I was the one who could sorta draw and was not afraid of the new computer tools? Did I start this path when I went to Paris and saw 'real art' and came home to dump my design career and become a teacher instead?

I do not know where I began. Like the spiritual pilgrim who cannot say where she first stepped onto the road, felt it beneath her feet, noticed she was not alone. I do not know.

But there are things I have done and will do to say, "I'm on a journey." Just the other day, I donated to International Arts Movement. It was easy with Paypal. Then I set off for AC Moore and filled my cart: gouache, watercolor, soft pastels, sketch books, acrylics, canvases, brushes. On my Sabbath, I sat quietly and tried out the pastels. I may not want to be an artist, but I'm thinking I should be a participant rather than just an observer. I will commit to at least a year of focused "pilgriming," making art and viewing it and reading about it and discussing it.

I feel shy participating. My skills are simple. It's like being a child in a grownup's world. Is it a coincidence that my first attempt was an empty, dead bush being graced by powder-blue dragonflies? I chose golden colors for the water over which it would lean, made mistakes that caused me to blend things I hadn't intended to blend. The bush became one with the background.

My girls said the picture looks like a desert, with the sand swirling, rising. Why yes. And perhaps that is no coincidence either. A tentative bush in the desert, graced by dragonflies, breathing blue-flamed beauty... which burns but does not consume.


Dragonfly Bush in pastels, by L.L. Barkat.

Impostor

Night falls and I am restless. "I'm beginning," I think. And my mind crowds with details.

What to bring? What to hold? Release? Who will I meet? Where will the road take me? Does it matter? Maybe the road is my destination?

And this...

"Not you. You aren't even a real artist. Worse yet, you don't want to be. Your own daughter, only twelve years old, is a better illustrator than you. Someone will notice how flimsy, how barely there you are, how totally unsuited for this journey. They will laugh, or show you the exit ramp."

Do all pilgrims feel this way?

I wake to a new day, rain-heavy. Is this a good day to begin? Maybe I should stay inside just a little bit longer, rethink things.

But Joan, Christine, Joelle, e l k, Erin, and Stefani have already waved hello, as if I was really going, as if I was not the impostor I feel myself to be.

Sculpture by Maureen Connor, 1990.

Pilgrimage

I know.

When you go on pilgrimage, you're supposed to start walking. Somewhere. The truly faithful might even journey on their knees.

So what does it mean when you go on pilgrimage, but you have no particular destination? No map, per se? Just a sense of 'this is it' and a few stray bread crumbs thrown into the path by life, or God, pain or dream, hope or confusion?

Looking back over my journals, I was struck that there has been this quiet idea in me for a while. It's been so quiet I couldn't even hear it until now, when a few things disappeared from my life, and a few other things showed up unexpectedly. Anyway, I'm going on pilgrimage. What kind?

Just this...

Art.

Oh, I have almost no idea what it means right now. But this space will become my studio and journal, my walking stick and resting place. And you are invited to linger with me.

Longing

Alone tonight, beside
the open window,
I hear trees moving,
whispering to the wind.

Would that in my dark
places, I could lean in,
let you tender move and
make me whisper too.

Architecture

From the unedited chapter "Weep: celebration", in God in the Yard...

Our house gapes at me from the far side of the lawn, its aluminum storm windows reflecting an air of doubt and boredom. Must I explain myself to a 1930’s Tudor? Okay, this is my story. I am in a makeshift temple in my back yard. These are the boundary lines: a rusty chain link fence on three sides that separates my property from the neighbors’ and a patch of English ivy that fills the little woods from side to side and top to bottom; I always sit in the ivy under the white pine, never in the grass.