Lake Superior

Observations while drawing around the shores of  Lake Superior

Art is a form of contemplative prayer, best conducted in places quiet enough to allow the subtle voices to be heard—beyond the din of market and social diversions. Perched on a windy cliff with a sketchbook on my knees and contemplating the graphic conundrums posed by a rocky archipelago, I find myself resolving the receding and overlapping lines of more complex and meaningful perspectives as well.

The converging lines of horizon and eroding granite come into ever sharper contrast as I begin to tease apart and discern the multi-layered reflections and vanishing points, each layer molded by geologic forces and enfolding the remains of untold generations of creatures. Eternal truths here lie exposed in an esoteric text, open and freely available to those ready to perceive.

Questions of interest rates and ideologies fall away before the clarity of water, wood, air, and stone—substances whose medium of communication is unfailingly direct: that of thermodynamics. The choices implied are of the utmost simplicity and immediate biological import.

Striving for wholeness within this organic context, I enter the fluid world of the fish; feel the flight musculature and predatory impulses of the dragonfly. Sitting before the millennial oak, with pencil poised over paper, I discern from deep within the pulsing of a heartbeat—slow and measured, and yet a rhythm beyond hearing, apprehended by senses for which I have no words.

I reach into a space within and without, timeless and immediate, and lay down a line, hoping in the process to behold and make manifest glimpses of the divine.