The Dark Embrace

I painted a number of small dark tonal landscape paintings in the early years of 2000. Some of them were inspired by the time I spent in the Hill Country in Texas and others by the beach and ocean in California. Each painting had a three quarter inch of pale border of color surrounding it. Some were pale yellow, pale pink or pale blue. The borders of color had the effect of modulating the dark tonal effect of the interior of the paintings. The deep dark depth seen inside each painting did not go on forever, it was contained by the border.

On the contrary, just because the colors are dark, they are not dark paintings. I see them as filled with feeling and emotional expression unfazed by color or bright lights. They are spaces where you can just be with feelings of depth, the dark, and its many gradations. Recognition of these deeper pulsations gives the heart a chance to experience meaning in spaces it sees and lives in. These darker spaces must be entered with reverence and a questing spirit that seeks solace in itself and the world. Do not enter the dark with fear, enter it with reverence.