The Gold – for all the Icon Painters.

Creativity is a path to silence, reflection, spirituality
Being in touch with my soul
Trying to express God’s creation in paint
Abstract landscape
Weather
Trying to depict infinity
A quick path
To this concept
Is
Flat gold
This is too easy
On an icon
Gold equals Infinity Space
Palimpsest, proplasmos
Ah such an easy answer
Although it took someone else to tell me this
I have spent a year and a day
Ever since that fog bank in Orkney
Trying trying trying
To depict liminal space
Perhaps I have been looking for Purgatory?
The space between Heaven and Earth
Between dying and reaching Heaven
A place of purification
Like the court of the Gentiles outside the Temple in the Old Testament
Like standing next to the veil of the Temple
Trying to look through it but not being able to
The Sanctuary doors in Orthodox Christian churches
The rood screen in the Cathedral
hiding my Daughter from eyes so she may sing un-gazed upon apart from by God
Impenetrable like the fog bank
In it yet unable to touch it
Between two solid states of being but not at either one.
Anyway all this head scratching has led where exactly?
Flat Gold
That’s where
I’m angry.
Is this a joke?
A mythical year and a day odyssey?
Searching, painting, experimenting, drawing, glazing trying
And may I say failing?
To create the perfect fog bank
The perfect cloud
The perfect Smokey light
The perfect untouchable unapproachable light of God – light of Heaven
Infinity space
The perfect balance of play between shadows and light
What is it?
Its flat Gold
Easy peasy – no skill in that
Stick on the gold - et voila!
Infinity space
I could scream
Why exactly have I spent a year and a day playing with light?
Just paint it gold.
It’s so tacky
It’s so easy

So skill-less
So unimaginative
So trite
So bling

And yet on an icon its none of those things
It’s perfect
Its perfection
It reflects the sky
The dark
The light
The mist
Then shadows.
It reflects me
O
It reflects me
Looking at it, looking into it
It really is infinity space.
The creator looks back through the golden light through the reflection of their creation.
Bonkers amazing wonderful
But what am I now going to do with eighteen painted boards filled with unfulfilling infinity space?
Perhaps I can paint icons on them?

Ah this is painful,
This hurts
This is sore
This is miserable
I’m miserable
I’ve spent a year and a day
In black
Pretending to be miserable because I’m not miserable
Dad is dead
And I’m ok
I don’t have to be frightened any more
I don’t have to watch what I say
I don’t have to be judged or criticized
I don’t have to be kind or polite
or never ever say what I think
I don’t have to deal with and work round his obsessive compulsive locking and keys
His accusations and delusions, his depressions his autistic behavior, his rudeness.
These things which I must never, ever, ever say out loud.
I do not ever have to circumnavigate him ever again.
My spirit sighs with relief
I can relax he is not here and he will never be here again.
He’s gone,
He’s really, really gone.
And I’m free to be me
Damascene moment.

God is in the Gold.

I am free to be me.






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