love is the way
When we talk of art we need to talk of love.
In truth, when we talk of anything we need to talk of love.
There’s a love we hardly know about that underlies the love we always talk about – that isn’t always love. Sometimes this undercover love is known as ‘risking everything’ or ‘seeing for the first time’ or ‘rendered speechless’ or ‘time stands still’ or ‘freedom from oneself’ or ‘the intimate unknown.’
This love enrols us and enfolds us when we dedicate ourselves whole heartedly and single-mindedly to anything we do; making love and even making war, digging holes and driving the car, cleaning, cooking, writing music, sitting listening to the rain.
When we talk of art we are talking about love. Love is the hidden innards of all the art that has endured, just as it is the overt message of all the sages who have ever lived. This love we also meet in a baby’s eyes and wherever we look in nature: its intimate partner is called meditation – finding out who and what we really are – now emergent from the monasteries and moving in the market place.
The rising tide of dire disaster that surrounds us is the outer shape of our inner loss of love. Awakening the eye is admitting the love and enquiry into self to guide us back to harmony.
I call this series of watercolour paintings Paramananda*. They have been prompted by expressions of this love that I observed in people who have meditation in their lives. Sometimes they are dancing, sometimes sitting silently, sometimes passing through grave illness and sometimes waiting for their lover. If these images transmit to you a figment of that underlying love, love has done its work.
– Rashid Maxwell
22 08 17
*Paramananda: beyond bliss.
Images and text copyright Rashid Maxwell, courtesy of the artist.
Website: www.rashidmaxwell.com
Rashid’s published poetry includes: Not Knowing Guides Our Feet; Life Is One Blessed Thing After Another; and Everything Is Something Else. Check them out on Amazon.
Also see his excellent essay at The Culturium – Rashid Maxwell: To Save the Planet With a Paintbrush
the awakened eye 