shrine

’shrine’
mixed media on canvas with earth and ash
23×23 inches

The epigraph written across the canvas reads:

“Make it happen that birds bring the shape from his body,
secure in this memory, in the time of year;
the heart is not lost that was made in thanksgiving,
he will go for the light that lives on your prayer.”

There is always a private story unfolding between two people, and this is just as relevant between the living and the dead. A bond survives, I think, and the story continues with the help of imagination and faith, of celebration and remembrance. I felt quite palpably during the making of this work that the feeling is not one-sided – someone was with me at times and came in response to the strong emotion I felt at writing the poem for him. Perhaps he was thankful that I wanted to honour him, perhaps the trace of him left behind inside me has an independent warmth and energy, perhaps I have made it all up to compensate for my loss; but even if it is all in my imagination I can at least allow myself to believe that it is true, that I have been instructed to care for his soul. It lives in my continual prayer, thought, memory and thanksgiving. Even if it began in imagination, its repetition will make it true, in time and place: this is the belief, that if you believe strongly enough in something, it will be so.

The valley symbol is the purest form I know of representing my connection with the universe. It works on so many levels – a place to sleep, to be open, to receive, to journey, to remember, to question, to make convenants. I wanted to try and get up close to it in this painting, to experience its truth and simplicity, to go back to the beginning when I first went to the fosse on the hillfort. I used to lie between the beech trees looking up at the distant heaven, through layer upon layer of cloud into the depths of my soul.  The covenant was made then, I think, with the person I want to remember.  It was around the time of the autumn equinox, and the mood of the piece is autumnal too – one is at the threshold of a new mode of being at such times and the dead petition us to remember them, to bring them back into the body, or so it seems. I have tried to do that with this painting – I don’t want him to be lost so perhaps I will believe that the universe is big enough to uphold his light somehow, and that my prayer can sustain him.