the power of a single line

… picking up a crayon as a child to make your first mark on paper; seeing a painting, a drawing, a hand-crafted bowl, an intricate and lovingly stitched quilt; hearing a song, singing a song; moving your body to music (or without), and in spontaneous and intuitive ways; pretending to be another person, an animal, insect, plant, mineral; being transported for even just a few seconds by a painting, a song, a poem, dance, play, a beautiful and lovingly crafted meal or garden … how do these moments move inside us? how do they move our thoughts and feelings and our bodies? where do we go that we may not have gone without the experience of creative exploration or expression, or art? and what does this mean for our individual worlds and for the larger world? Each of these moments, however large or small, can open our eyes and hearts, deepen our sensitivity, and enliven our creativity.

The deeper I go into my own explorations in charcoal, for example – and, of late, particularly, the dance-drawing series – the more I feel the potential and realized poetic resonance of a single line/stroke... the power that that one line can have to move and shape another moment, another line or shape or thought or feeling, or call up a memory, an association, an insight – and with that single line, I'm launched, launched down a path… If the line or stroke is honest and my eyes are alive and lively and aware, the path often takes me into previously uncharted territory. Then, I throw a pack on my back and go, explorer on the move… into strange and wondrous worlds, that wind spiraling into the utterly familiar and then around again to worlds curiously reminiscent of those exquisitely light and devastatingly dark moments of childhood, that then drop away into the unknown, to hidden corners, delicate luminosities, gentle breezes…

--- w.s.


"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

–From “Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot


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