Dark Night of the Soul
Acrylic on 12x12" Gessobord with 3/4" Birch Sides
This morning I've been listening to Bach's Credo - Et Incarnatus Est and Crucifixus for the project I mentioned in my last post of April 24 from Bach's Mass in B Minor. As I look over the paintings I did for Augsburg Fortress's Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book (see April 19 blogpost), I was caught by this painting called "Dark Night of the Soul". When asked to interpret the prayers written by the many prayer writers of this book, I had in mind that I didn't want every painting to be pie-in-the-sky, cheery and unreal to the experiences of those who will use this book. Yet, that was a challenge for me, for even in my own interpretations of the endless pain and weakness I experienced with the onset of rheumatoid arthritis. I tended to paint in vibrant and yes, hopeful colors. Maybe it was my defiance toward the illness, thumbing my nose at it trying to take over my life. A battle I didn't always win on a daily basis, but with rest and medication, I did get better, at least enough to function and paint again. I handed in these paintings for the Hear My Voice project and was asked a few days after to paint something to express the darkness, those times where we feel defeated, sorrowful and hopeless. And so, I came up with this painting, Dark Night of the Soul.
Today as I am absorbing this music for the second of four Bach paintings, I am struck by its mournful tones. It begs a darker hue. When I was in the hardest days of RA, I remember sitting in church, trying to hold my head up with my hand. It was the hymns in minor keys with words of God's presence in my suffering that spoke to me most deeply. Not the happy, happy, joy, joy songs. They have their place, but we cannot forget the hard parts of what we experience in this human journey. It is sometimes in those darkest moments that we truly experience God's Spirit speaking as a thread of light, a tether, a thread we can grasp and hold onto.
I will be posting one of these paintings every Friday (hopefully) leading up to the launch of "Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayerbook" in August at the ELCA's Churchwide Gathering. Here's a link: ://go.augsburgfortress.org/hear-my-voice-a-prison-prayer-book.
* This painting has sold. I will be posting more every Friday and more will be available for purchase.
Today as I am absorbing this music for the second of four Bach paintings, I am struck by its mournful tones. It begs a darker hue. When I was in the hardest days of RA, I remember sitting in church, trying to hold my head up with my hand. It was the hymns in minor keys with words of God's presence in my suffering that spoke to me most deeply. Not the happy, happy, joy, joy songs. They have their place, but we cannot forget the hard parts of what we experience in this human journey. It is sometimes in those darkest moments that we truly experience God's Spirit speaking as a thread of light, a tether, a thread we can grasp and hold onto.
I will be posting one of these paintings every Friday (hopefully) leading up to the launch of "Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayerbook" in August at the ELCA's Churchwide Gathering. Here's a link: ://go.augsburgfortress.org/hear-my-voice-a-prison-prayer-book.
* This painting has sold. I will be posting more every Friday and more will be available for purchase.