Years later, I met up with a friend from high school. We had not seen each other in at least 25 years.  We talked about this and that, odd coincidences, and I shared my dream and symbol story.  All of a sudden he opens his shirt and shows me a tattoo he had placed on his left shoulder: the Uroboros.  I pretty much broke down crying.  The emotion came from a  place replete in meaning. A depth I felt, was beyond my own limited human scope.

After the immediacy of my close family members and friends,  probably less than ten beautiful souls,  there is my chosen family, a spirit world of kindred spirits. This long-list of dead people, has saved me in my most darkest hours.   These  dust particles, stars in the night, breeze by the ocean, droplets of rain, light through the cloud,  distant chirp by the rocks, these spirits (for lack of a better word) are great conversationalists.  They are as alive and fertile as a blooming garden.  They live in their words, films, art and music. They live in the stories they left behind.  They breathe through how they lived, and the Universe continues to spread their love.

When I was growing up, I was a very introverted child and spent a lot of time alone, or with my older brother.  My Mom worked a night shift and it was difficult to see her during the week.  I was seven, we had recently come to the United States from my native Cuba.  My parents divorced as soon as we got to the land of the free, and I was in that awful process of assimilation. New culture, new language, changed family nucleus. 

​School friends were scarce in Queens, NY.  In my  aloneness, my imagination was my electricity.  Not only was it alive in the daytime, night was fertile territory too.  I was a lucid dreamer, and had (because I no longer can) the ability to link dreams together. So, if the night before I was about to jump off a cliff in my dream, on the following night I'd jump.  It was exciting.  I love my dream time and my favorite dreams were, and still are, flying dreams.  

In addition to writing, which I've referenced in past blogs, I  love reading.  In those early elementary school years, my dead people were real and fictional. There was Anne Frank of course, the Hobbit and his adventures, and Francie, the protagonist in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  They were my people. 

My abstracts are born 100% from a place of improvisation and stream of consciousness.  They start with one line, followed by one color, and the rest reveals itself as I let myself flow.  I get out my way.  Sometimes, the ego "I" wants to be included, and I sense it like a cloud over my head. I acknowledge it, and wish it well in its journey.  

To get into the flow, just like a musician, I rehearse, I practice, I experiment.  I may do five minute studies on 6 x 6 paper tiles, (see example on left) or a series of daily portraits with oil pastels (see below, center).  Whatever comes out is useful for my creative process.  For example, the five minute 6 x 6 abstract I did in 2019  led to the large abstract work I finished this year, Hovering, a work also born out of stream of consciousness. 

In addition, I journal daily. Like writer Julia Cameron  pointed out in her book The Artist's Way, much is revealed when you practice something consistently.  What she termed, "morning pages," is a tremendous resource for any artist. Writing on paper, the act of writing, is a powerful stream, if one just lets it flow.

The lesson I learn from all of this is to show up.  Show up to your daily practice, whatever that is, without judgement, and simply start.  Then watch, what writer Elizabeth Gilbert  termed, the "Big Magic" happen.

​AMO

When I first saw this tree trunk, it looked like the face of a horse from the side,  turned to look at  the observer.  That is what I saw at the time, its fixed gaze.  I kept the picture and recently came upon it while scrolling through my New Mexico memories.  There is still something powerful about this image that has not let go of my psyche.  And so, I decided to make it an artwork.

Because the image gives me a sense of majesty and power, I felt it needed to be large in scope, so I sketched it like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece on four 19 x 25 sheets of Indian paper.  I love Indian paper because it is 100% made of recycled materials and it feels like fiber.  Sometimes, threads pull out as I rub the pastels against it with my fingers.  It is textural and reminds me of bark,  yet it is made of rags, not trees.  As I filled lines with my pastels,  so much more was revealed.  Not only did my choice of colors surprise me, but the thought, "what if trees could talk?" popped into my mind. The question surfaced from my subconscious because beings are suddenly appearing on the bark, as if their stories are within the tree, as if the tree is a reservoir of stories, recording scenes in time.  Only in the act of drawing this image, and looking at it deeply, closely, intimately, have the hidden stories, come out.  It's almost like when you first meet someone, and all you see is the surface, until they let you in and let you see their authentic self and share their experiences. That miracle of trust.

I don't know what those stories are, all I know is that something remains, spirits perhaps, an electric energy between beings that create color memories in others.  It is the knowledge of the land, animated and sacred.

Deep ecologists like Arne Naess, Gary Snyder, John Muir, have tuned into this energy for years, and many others, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Walt Whitman who came before the term even existed.  Reflective of Native American religious beliefs, it is a state of being where one becomes the voice of the land, in alignment with "land wisdom." 

After reviewing ten pieces from the Tree Stories series,  a patron who serves on the Creative Capital board wrote, "I've noticed that you are particularly interested in the structural aspects of a tree or branch that has been severed.  Your tree series has a weight to it, a sense of mass and weight."  Then he offered a definition of matter: "Noun, physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (physics) that which occupies space and possesses mass especially as distinct from energy."  He continued, "you seem to be working within the confluence between the spiritual and the physical. It's very interesting to me that by definition matter is distinct from the mind and the spirit.  And yet you have chosen to depict mass in order to convey spirituality.  This to me is the interesting question to mark..."

As all creators know, there is the art and what it means to the creator, and then there is the interpretation of others.  I struggle with over contextualizing my work, because I believe that as long as one is pulled-in and emotionally moved by the work, it's all good.   In addition, our own artistic expression changes continually, the way we see our own work changes daily. Just looking at one of my pieces from a different angle, alters how I feel about it.  Sometimes, when I look at a piece I did a few years back, I find associations I had not made when I first drew the image and thus its meaning also changes.  Hence, how we contextualize is framed by time.

For me, trees are not "things," they are not a "what," but rather, a who, a being.  Yes, they are matter, but they are also, Spirit.  There is no dualism.   As beings, they communicate, through scent, roots, branches and as a collective.  I recently read The Hidden Life of Trees and Braiding Wheatgrass, two wonderful books which further explain the science behind how trees, and plants in general, communicate.   It just happens that I walk around tuning my eyes  to their souls, consciousness, Spirit. 

This consciousness lives in a continuum, a sacred time-space, always in transformation.  When I see trees, especially when they are broken-open, severed, or damaged, I get to see these souls in transition.  I get a glimpse at what they once were, previous lives, the remains of their story.  Much like an open Egyptian casket of a king or queen, where one would see a skeleton and the things they loved around them, in this case, it is not a casket, it is a spirit being in its natural setting, and around it,  other earthly spirits.  All is energy.  In both of these examples, the Egyptian casket and the tree,  a narrative appears which references how they lived, possibly who or what they loved.  

​How do I capture these stories? First, I take pictures during mindful, meditative walks, of trees, stumps, trunks, that have an interesting form, texture, color or composition.  At the moment I take the picture, I don't necessarily see all the intricacies of the image.   It is only when I begin to draw it, that the story appears.    The best word I can find to explain this creative process is, alchemy. It is in the seeing that I too am transformed.  

It is my hope that my art awakens the viewer to their connection to the natural world and inspires a sense of belonging and community.  Click to see more of my Tree Stories.  

​
AMO