Full of Everything
As a painter, I feel content to paint just about anything. There is something beautiful and interesting to be found in every human face, every still life, and any landscape - if one knows how to see. And yet, I come back to a muse that just won’t stop posing for me - the flowers. Thich Nhat Hanh knew some things about life and spoke of flowers a lot. In No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life he said:
The flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.
Alongside my flowers, I have been painting starry cosmic fields in abstraction for years. They are the same subject to me, flowers and stars. I was first inspired to paint the cosmos all those years ago because they reminded me of my Dad. He carries a profound reverence and awe for nature and he was the first one to show me wildness, and the joy of expressing wonder. Painting starry fields has been a way to be connected to him. I think of his beautiful brass telescope he used to set up in the living room. My Dad was the first to show me how to look up, to really see those stars as something else and notice the sky. He showed me how to take mental photographs when we were on a vacation in Hawaii. We sat there, in a rare moment just him and I, on a dock after a nice family dinner. We weren’t talking, just looking out at the sunset together. I remember it being towards the end of the trip and even though I was just a kid back then, I understood that it was a real break between what was a stressful career of a surgeon and that moment of rest. He told me to take a mental picture of that sky so that I could take it back with me to the grey Seattle winter. I think of that moment often, and how nature has a way of arresting worry and quieting the mind. My father is a man who has raised five children, the first (me) being a set of twins. He is the living definition of what it means when someone says “generosity” - and his loyalty to my beautiful Mom, an example of the devotion of married love. When I get to have the experience of painting these sky memories, it is like being with everyone, and everything. At night, when I stare out of my window and I see the vast nothingness that allows the objects to shine, there is a connection to everything. And “my” flowers that I paint? They are simply ground stars.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self,”
To look up at the sky is to feel connected to everything. Everyone I have ever loved and everyone I will love is there, right here. We might not be able to touch the sky, or each other all the time, but we can make contact with in a different way. Maybe all of this is just another way of saying that heaven is on earth.
