The above photo appeared in memories on my Facebook page from January 28, 2020. Having just finished my other oil painting as described last week, I decided to use the paints and supplies still on my living room table to work on these again. Most of them are farther along than the above photo.
I remember it was around MLK day and this idea for this first one sparked the idea to do this series of paintings. These paintings are an honoring of the people they are of, but also a reminder to me of what each stood for. The way I see it, they all represented similar philosophies from different angles. I imagine that if they were all sitting in a room together, they would all feel kindred to each other because how they are similar is timeless.
I like this one for many reasons. I have always liked and respected the person it is of, Mother Teresa and have read a couple of biographies about her and her life. I love what she stood for. She also reminds me of what I loved about my maternal grandmother named Hazel. They are different in many ways, but there is a spark that for me seemed similar in each. When I saw one, it always reminded me of the other, and since both of these wonderful women have passed away, that spark means all the more to me.
This one brings back so many emotions and memories I can hardly imagine how I can summarize in a paragraph. I am deeply grateful to this man, Baba Hari Dass. I was able to heal my stiff aging body learning yoga in his community and very long story short, ended up managing the cultural center in Santa Cruz at his request for two and a half years.
I only hope that all the bright lights I met there, yoga teachers, community members, and founders received a large portion of help from me in exchange for the life-changing abundant help that I received from them. I will never for get my time there, or them.
While there in that Santa Cruz community, I was learning Sanskrit (the ancient sacred language of India) from a woman who had literally worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta earlier in her life, so two of my paintings have connections to each other.
St Francis I have also read about, and I have seen the movie Father Son, Sister Moon which is about his life. (I always wondered why they called it that.) In addition, while attending a church in my late 20’s early 30’s, we were using the Prayer of St. Francis in meditation. I loved the prayer. I have been using it in meditations ever since which has been nearly three decades now. It is hard to express how helpful that has been.
I have also met many people who feel an affinity to this teaching as do I and many of them have trekked to his church in Italy. That I would love to do, but haven’t.
Like several of the other paintings, am still working on St. Francis. I must confess on all these I get a little spiritual-star struck. The emotions and memories the images conjure has been distracting to the mechanics of painting but is a thrilling adventure none-the-less.
As someone whose primary religious influence was Christianity, this one is a little more intimidating for me. I like this image because the dress and ethnic appearance appears authentic to the place and time he existed.
Regarding the above images, I love the image on the left which I decided to paint, but for some reason I don’t remember now, I wanted him looking to the left rather than the right so I reversed the image. As you can see, this threw the colors off. I was therefore using the one on the right to get the composition correct, and the one on the left to get the coloring and texture correct.
I painted the painting on the left, and wasn’t happy with it, so I did the one on the right. the background of the one on the right is from a Google search of the modern geography of southern Israel. Whether he was ever actually walking through this particular area I don’t know… maybe.
I like the second one, but looking at them now, I also like the first one. Although the second one is technically more accurate, there is a softness and warmth in the first that isn’t in the second. To see these two side by side communicates seeing from the emotional heart vs. seeing with the accuracy-seeking head. Now I like them both equally for different reasons.