The Woman at the Roots

First came this strange painting, which I finished just before the New Year.  For years now I've been making sculptures that are "rooted", now I attempt to paint them, not so easy for me.  I think this calm face among the rooted earth is winter born, dormant and waiting.  Waiting, and not asleep, rather, awakened.  Waiting for what?  That will be revealed in time, for now, resting, dreaming, sustaining.  

But the Painting desired a poem, and I found the poem I needed  (below) by Sharon Blackie, author of one of my favorite books, IF WOMEN ROSE ROOTED. It's perfect for the advent of a New Year, my own, and as a collective Blessing as well. I excerpt from her poem Peregrina:

Only lend me a loom and I will

take up the threads of this unravelled life.

I will weave a braid from three strands of seaweed

I will wind it three times around my finger

I will dig my salt-encrusted hands into the soil

and wed myself to the thirsty

brown roots of a new beginning.

 

 

              All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is  COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

"Seeing in the Dark"..........an Exploration of new Paintings

"Persephone" 2023

 

"Deeply I go down into myself.  

My God is Dark, and like a webbing 

made of a hundred roots that drink in Silence."

........... Rainier Maria Rilke

I found the above quote by Rilke while navigating through my files, and it has become a poem that inhabits my imagination these days.  Roots, the generative Dark,  the Webbing to all that lies under the appearances of things, below surfaces, the pentimentoes of life, the unseen union that we must learn to see "In the Dark"...........

I am trying to return to my first love, Painting.  With AI,  I guess I and my colleagues are truly obsolete - who could compete with what that Monster leering at us on the horizon can do?  (I guess that shows that I am very concerned about what has so thoughtlessly and blithely been unleased on humanity).  

Regardless,  I have always found painting the most difficult of arts, and the most extraordinary dance of form, light and shadow, and the joy of color. To see those colors emerge from a tube, become alive on a canvas............ It's not easy for me to paint,  I guess I always feel intimidated until I begin, and then I just become emersed in the making.  

Strangely, although it is just past the Solstice and High Summer now, I  seem to have an interest in the dark, in noir, in buried and invisible Roots.  I guess I can thank Rilke for that, and before me sit a collection of intimidating, blank, very black canvases on which to create worlds.  The painting above is the first so far.

But I see that this theme has haunted me before..............

"Seeing in the Dark"  2009

"Solitude" (from The Rainbow Bridge Oracle) 

'Hecate" 1997

"Past Desire, Hope or Love, I Rest in You a Seed" (1993)

New "Icons"

"Butterfly Woman"

"Sow"