Painting    Aspect and derivative of a larger work-

Is it nothing … Lam 1:12, and its commentary.

 Discovery

Paint is the medium of the artist- put to work by the person within.  Word-work is the medium of their artistic soul.  They reflect upon each other, about each other, in knowing, inspiring, and in transforming each other, as well as the world.  One without the other is incomplete, unknowable, void of life- dead.  Beauty in Art is a coming together, the person and his soul, of their artistic workings, to be shared, and its worth’s value accessed as judged by you.  Of what color are you then?

Life exists between the black and the white of it- in the paint.  All else in light’s middle medium is but colored opinion.  We are all but shades and hues of a light’s spectrum.  Passion is rendered in vanity’s vibrant tones, while purpose is drawn as imperfect, by feathered fears and penciled bones.

Confessions

I wish not to paint religious art, but to compose with color’s spirituality.  I want not to write words to think, but to script wonder poetically.

Origins of Life rendered in Devine Black beyond all light

The absolute-cold color observed was painted from beyond all light.  A paradox- of its nothing, is rendered in the darkest of all tinctured emotions- in black.  The color’s mysterious artistic allure entices us with its purpose, leading our hesitant trust back in space and in time toward the mythical beginnings of light, advancing its affect into the depths of the lightless desolation awaiting us.  The emptiness abiding therein retreats us further into its own sinister place, then further still, back into its unknowable eternity.

This unwelcomed guest- the apprehension we feel, as we venture deeper into that black, authors our growing fear of this threatening unknown void, while receding us into that color’s realm of beyond all light.  As we journey, our cunning intruder’s weighted dimension quietly drapes us within its dyer darkness.  It prepares its final heavy embrace in having clothed you and me in the blackest remnants of a dementia’s darkest shade.  Our attendant fear re-fashions its persuasions, as we descend downward, deeper, into a much stranger sensing of a distant on-coming presence.  Deeper yet, it now turns our intuitions around our weakening objections from a self-confessed perplexing disbelief into a sudden moment’s reluctant acceptance.  Deeper still.

That of our being now wanders among unfamiliar strangers slowly moving to the rhythmic dirge of solemn shuffling gaits, as performed by the blackest of silhouetted souls.  We sense our belonging to this order of seekers, roaming as they must and as we now move, having joined them in their meandering soundless wave-in-wait of dutiful witness to this unending procession before us- that of the militant marchings of mystifying life-like black shadows.  The passing pageant demonstrates its remaining color columned in secretive silence.  Arguing in muted gestured complaints and objecting in disturbed gyrations, they protest at the decaying of their once human forms. They are slowly wasting away as all light disowns them, discarding them behind.

The fading of the figures foretell of light’s final abandonment as they pass.  They rove in misery toward a formal forgetting of the last vestige of their once only desire- that of doing well in perfect synchronicity with their lifelong companions. Their faithful service was dutifully recorded by their light-filled lingering past, that was until now, this being their solitary closing dark passage- their unknowing of that last light in their lives, leaving nothing of them but words, neither to be spoken, nor to ever be remembered by.

The passing shadow’s sorrowful pleadings silently hover above the ranks moving beneath them in their death’s retrospective, until their growing number and weight of words releases them to empty their desperate implorings into the slow downward churn of whatever faint-praised psalms and expired prayers  that may still languish unstirred, or among those which have fallen to lie far below, interred.  Beside the composers’ sacred versing and hallowed pleas of the past, those shadowed final beseechings rain down too, as desiccated dying dust, settling to lay forever decomposing into that paradox of its nothing by the workings of utter despair, upon the blackened bleak bar rain of the unknowning , and forgotten dead.

Devine Black

Man of us, take your leave in words of this dismal dark beyond.

Wait for a God’s absence, then ascend!  Quickly!  Fly!

Return to the world this light, as life!  Worthy words of its knowing.

Remember that for which I shall have to stay, here behind,

As I had before, and in my own way, to harvest light among the sorrows.

For us, I surrender words to that work for which I now must pay.

Return to paint with a resending light’s rescued white,

Though dimmed down to a cad’s argued glowing- made imperfect.

Survivor of life’s end- the light, it to you I shall send, and most often.

Believing in that of its absence- well then, let that be your flawed night.

Of that remnant light from the dead?  That to paint into a perfect day!

Move on.  Leave now.

I remain in eternity to paint among these souls and shadows that pass,

Making certain to recover their discards of light- spent life in their path,

Redeeming all of light’s beauty and abundance of glimmerings that last.

It shall be my gift for you to paint, to use light in its whole or in its parts,

As having been taken from those who may have in life from its start,

Neither chose it … to want, nor wished it … to see.  To wonder.

I shall forever endure for them their light’s loss- a saddened borrow.

And by this utility- my deepest sorrow, I shall forever ask in words,

”Are these then not our winnings? Not my chance?”

Depart ! For certain you are my eyes to see, my willing want in dance.

Your spirit by His approving glance, has set you for all of eternity-

The more favored of us, the one part of us He chose to be free.

Herein, I shall abide my pain with this one colored paint- beyond all light,

As well as to suffer through knowing of your more fortunate fate.

Yet still, trust me to ably brush a humor’s want upon your faceless fears.

Know that since before this conviction’s time, I have been at your drawing,

At your warring, as silent courage- friend, as your mold, your artistic soul.

Is that faith’s light your’s?  Forwith to grow?  Then go and draw on!  War on! 

Shall I eternally labor as one fearless among the more forgotten, the dead.

Forgiving darkness, watching always its creep through black stained-glass tears?

Giving up to life, that light from this darkness, of which now you surely can know?

I shall then paint!- my sadness, my madness, my shortest moments into eternal years,

In that Devine Black- beyond all light, is for you to know.  To then show.

Of it and of me?  Be pleased in your leaving , for only you and God will truly know?

Rockin’ Horseman  ‘09

Journal Entry

January 26, 2009

From where does this inspiration come?  Why is an idea- a knowing, or its color given sanction by an artist to paint from it, a writer to wander its words across the hunger of a blank page- a Dante, or a musician to compose from it four single notes into an unforgettable symphony?- a Beethoven.   I am neither entirely sure, nor can I believe I will ever know.   What I do know is that of a shared feeling of sadness born in a tearful sorrow’s release by my dear friend upon her reading of Thomas Hardy’s last page of his novel- Mayor of Casterbridge.  What I do know is that fear, that stark dark terror, when brought within an arm’s reach of Joseph Conrad’s character Wolf Larsen in his classic novel, Sea-Wolf.  What I do know is that Black- beyond all light, imperfect yet gloriously Devine, alive! from having seen it in the velvet shine of my Saddie Mae’s black coat, as she basked in the bright morning sun of a winter’s day following a snowy arctic night.  A vivid violet seen in effervescent sparkles made her black resplendent, gleaming, luminous, unlike any black extruded straight from a color’s pretentiously labeled tube.  Maybe I should not have told you that, and let your creativity wonder.  Know that I believe sacred should be those color’s we chose for our lives, and use in rendering our best ideas- mixed and made imperfectly, yet Devine, upon the palette of our artistic lives.

-  30  -

Monday, January 05, 2009     Today I have created a separate journal to capture my personal thoughts, and record those comings and goings of the many projects at hand, in particular the painting pA08002.  Now there are three Journal-types abiding individual paintings- R&D’s, Thoughts/Reflections, and Records.  I call them my Read, Feed, and Deed books.  Yesterday, I picked up the painting from Hopewell Museum, after a two month exhibition here in Paris, KY.  Some Lexingtonian art’sie folks stopped in too.  After taking down the painting from the wall, I had a long and very enjoyable conversation with Nancy O. –  of curatorship and archaeologistic learnings and leanings.  We discussed her current creative writing- historical fiction (very Irish stuff for me, lavishly painted words in hedonistic hues of catholic emerald green, spot-checked with a dab or two of a northern orange).  She is busy with writing adventures, character development, etc. as well as with aspects of her interest in art-in-general.  I suppose that could include my painting as well.  Art stimulating creative writing?  Yep.  I am pleased to believe that may have been the case.

The titling on the wall ID plaque, “It Is Nothing . . . Lam 1:12” was incorrect.  It should have read “Is it nothing… Lam 1:12” posed as a question- a mistake or oversight, probably on my part.  Apparently a museum patron had picked up the misquote.  Interestingly, someone had thoughtfully posted a copy of the chapter and verse of Lam 1:12 beside the painting for easy reference.  Helpful I'm sure.  I first thought.  I had hoped that folks would have an impetus to hurry home and to at the least, find their family’s “Good book”.  I suppose there were enough inquirers to justify the time and effort for someone to have placed the verse-copy alongside the painting.  Victory still at hand?  Yes.  Apparently folks were curious enough and somewhat engaged in the painting, which for me was the important thing- that it really mattered for whatever reason.  Maybe they got the message, or were intrigued enough to think about what it was that the artist, I should say the painting, ultimately wanted to convey, although, the creation of it and for much of the painting’s life thus far, was not intended for public consumption or comment.  It had been just a thing’ie-thing I had been working on trying to come up with some answers to some simple questions, like – Why 911 ?   Living down, deeply deep, in the Bible belt, one has to be very careful, by being industrially sharp witted when referencing Biblical text, as well as staying on message.  Folks here insist that it is verbieten to digress from God’s honest truth, at least from what they have come to believe it to be.  I’m getting an impression that folks too, seem a bit suspicious about incorporating any Old Testament text, tenor, or texture in rounding out a religion’s bigger picture, with one exception- that being of incorporating “anything” from Isaiah regarding a messianic message.  OK, a little passing hint from Mica is welcome too.  Yet, OT Biblical history will get them a’walkin’ away from you real quick.  They seemingly don’t want to know, nor do they like you knowing any either.  I wonder why.

I later met with Patrick and Leona up at their barn.  They were very encouraging in their comments about the painting, having gone to see the exhibit before Christmas.  Their professional opinion was that it should be in New York.  I value that.  Patrick had at one time been a very “super big time” NY Gallery guy.  Others I’ve talked with seem to think 'NY' as well.  Patrick and I then strolled out into the pasture and tried to get “Willard” to come over and have a visit.  Patrick didn’t bring any carrots, so “Willard” wasn’t that interested.  Mr. "W" knew he was without halter, so it became a “catch me if you can” playtime for him.  Enticements like carrots and apples (better) are a no-no, a never do thing from drop day one (birth), to try to get an equine-anything, at anytime, or to have them do anything.  Patrick should have known that.  He does I’m sure.  But he loves horses too much to abide by an elemental rule.  I guess that's OK.  I’d sneak an apple or at least rub it on my hands anticipating the big nose sniff.  The horses are his babies, bliss-babies.  I admire him as we all should.  He’s a good horseman, a kindly person.  Horses have a way of making humble stick.  Now, due to a horrendous bout of “stickie wickies” which got to do a’clingy to his tail and his mane when he rolled around on the ground some weeks ago in da’ weedies- contaminated Bluegrass, basking in a sunny Sunday afternoon’s delight, Patrick has made a train-wreck of his tail and mane-  he cut them out.  Truly a bad hair day if you’ve ever seen one at least for a horse.  They’re very sensitive creatures you know.  Sure.  But I am sure Willard thought it was a good idea at the time.  Horses don’t always do what they should or what you would want them to do.  Hmmm.  ‘Say same’ about some folks I know?  You Know?  "That’s what ya’ get Patrick for not tractor-mowing often enough."  It can be said, “that’s the horses’ job”- mixed opinion here folks.  I did at least have a hands on meeting with the other stallions.  They walked right on over when we approached them.  Patrick’s got some drop-dead beauties- thoroughbreds, mixed in among some Standard Breds.  Some carry the World’s best bloodlines- triple crowners, but they never did well under silk (racing).  Shame.  They are still damn gorgeous.

Well, my freshly shinned- military grade spit shinned, “Sunday Go Ta’ Meetin’ shoe-boots” got pasteurized so to speak.  Even mucked-up in the lacings.  When I got home Saddie Mae picked up the “horsie” on my shoes.  Her “knows” got bent for not having taken her.  She went right off her dinner just to show me… didn't eat a thing, knowing I’d worry like hell cause she’s not eating again- ya’ know the “vet bills trick” dogs seem to know about, and use frequently.  Better then having her choose to throw-up in your best sneakers, an alternate anger venting she could have done I suppose.

Again my thoughts have run to Rockin’ Horse Farm’s role in what the big picture has become.  Horses, Dogs, and “The Act” program are creating a bigger and better Burgoo to deliss’h on, so it seems.  All of it is fairly fuzzy or finely feathered, but I can see something really important developing.  I’m into it, but its making life more complex.  Hard to adjust, after so many years of trying to even the hills, and make it all simple.  I just hate to RE-shine my shoe-boots… even my horseshoes… so I’ll just go and start another painting instead… maybe of a mad, bad dog.  Saddie Mae now gives me a long drooley mouth slobber kiss, and then that’s that.  I did use the sleeve, and then gave her a pat on her butt... and I guess I can now say that all is well again at Rock’n Horse farm.

-30-

I am often asked, “Where is Rockin’ Horse Farm?”

This wonder, if expressed as a serious wish to visit that venerable Kentucky homestead, can very easily be addressed.  What cannot be so simply stated however, are those recommendations commonly asked for- as regarding the best way to come, as well as for a way’s future direction upon leaving.  Who and where are you now? asks the questionnaire.  Are you willing and prepared to embark- free to come?  Are you able to bravely accept that your maps’, or chart’s, knowable point of departure may not necessarily be that same place anticipated upon your later return?  It seldom is.

The notion of access to opportunity is wonderfully inviting and initially free of the constraints of later realities.  What is made of the experience, and to where and how one journeys, are still relatively unpredictable.  Ah! Is it then an adventure? one may ask.  It always … can be.

Free Sign-Up forms are available at the front desk in the lobby.

Old country tales would have you belief that within the farthest reaches of serenity’s deepest woods, hidden within its darkest storied shadows, lay the slumbering forest demons.  Irish bred folktales accuse the unwelcomed transgressors of the sylvan of rudely awaking the dormant demons. Their angered spirits arise, then ascend-on-high donning soft white ermine robes to masquerade their deepening anger and vengeance as they fly along the trailing white wisps of angelic clouds.  There the demon spirits churn their darkest moods into raging tempests, then suddenly descend to suffer the lands.

            It is the unexpected absence of those magnificent high flying hawks and falcons which gives urgent warning to seek shelter from those heavy dark clouds angrily barreling over the hills.  Fear plays the storm’s bow across the tense strings at nerve’s ending, offering the strident strains of shearing winds as a prelude to the fast approaching crescendo of the storm’s furious finale.  When the storm’s ominous looking clouds taste the sweet vaporous spirits of Kentucky’s bluegrass is when they begin to race.  It is the growling quarrels between the angered clouds which cause the storms to suddenly go mad- swirling, then streaking, stripping their tracks with evil whips of wicked wind.  They race on.  Tearing, then thrashing, the clouds terrify each other and all the lands before them with their howling thunderous tempers and bolts of blistering lightning.  And, just as suddenly, they have passed.  Seen rushing off into the nearby Appalachian Mountains, it is there that the storm’s clouds settle their raging racing disputes and score their favorite winded ferocities.  Storied recollections of these sudden terrifying storms, which too frequently torment these peaceful parts, have friends swearing that it is His nature's mischievous way of remaking sinners into Christians, again.  Neighbors cease their swearing then, yet He knows their sudden unexpected God-fearing will usually last till shortly after a dinner's grace Amen.

Awhile back I posted at the farm’s horse gate a woodcut name to my place- Rockin' Horse Farm.  The farm and plaque have fared well, both in name and respectability.  If truth be known, some farms as well as some folks, like horses if they're good racers, should be named, while other farms and folks like mad mules gone bad, shouldn't be.  Of me, I'd wish to be known for what good I can do on the farm- as a Rockin' Horseman, letting my good name remain for my friends as the one assigned unknowingly to me at birth.  Now, what you and I can do on Rockin’ Horse Farm, and in the true "Spirit of the Bluegrass", is to grow faithful into friendship and kindly into neighborliness. I know the storms won’t like that, but I trust the horses will.  Would you? 

-  30   -

BREAKFAST MEATS ?

I never thought of Shrimp on toast with a little Sucker's grape jamb as being a new morning "get-me-going".  What do guys know?  I didn't get the idea from anyone...thank God.  I just put 2 and 2 together when I read the signs. Can you do that?  Shrimp before noon- a new bliss expression?  Walmart seems to think so.  They are like National Geographic, or Mr. Rogers...honest, believable, and trustworthy.  A National Historic Foodstore.  My friend.  I'd better check with some girlie friends before I spend $8.96...or I may live to regret it.

It seems I got a little confused along the way....
I was really concerned about taking this test.  Everyone was buzzing about it. Well, from the hill and still above the horse farm, Myers-Briggs can only be a reference to Myers- a national brand of snow plow, and Briggs (Briggs & Stratton)- an engine, or motor, to control the hydrolics of the plow.  Sooo, I assumed this test was an operator's licensing qualification to run a snow plow off the front end of ye' ole F150.  Ordinances vary from county to county here, some from rural farm to rural farm.  We make 'em up as we need 'em.  I reside in Bourbon County, KY.  We're famous.  At least you have heard of our beverage of choice 'round here.  Made some this morning- Vat Fresh.  I went down to the fair ground's hall, and signed up for the test. It seems I'm somewhere in the middle, in the 'tween someone told me, but I passed.  I had assumed the hand-eye co-ordination part of this test was to move that little black dot to the 'tween position, like shifting gears...so that's what m' hand told m' fingers to do.  I passed, and supposedly now I am qualified to shovel snow mechanically.  I don't know what the other fancy words or % numbers refer to.  Taxes, or maybe something about that nice little lady up in front, giving out the pencils and telling everyone, "Don't open the test until told to do so."  I'm an INTJ.  That doesn't have anything to do with communism does it?  Is that good for a life time?  Is it a good thing spiritually?  I did'nt get an officially signed paper card that I could laminate and put in my wallet, along with my Hunter's Education License, AAA, stamps and VA Medical ID.  Does this now mean I know "How to win friends and influence people"?  Do I have to get a yearly booster shot, or that I can get into Double Bingo night free?  I hope they have a National Organization, monthly social gatherings, and that I can get their junk mail, and even an M-B credit card.  Well, I feel like an American for taking the test.  My nervousness is gone.  I can finally get back into the hall.  I will be looking for M-B lapel pins at the many Tourist Information Centers across our great nation.  I'm proud to be an INTJ American.  Thank you for having me.

Test Results

Your personality type is INTJ.

I didn't have a chance to thank the lady,
and I walked out with the pencil.
Maybe I should slow down a bit.
It's those pills the VA makes me take. 

I am posting apologetically due to my LJ doesn't want to do CUT today. 

Within the thought experience of personal journaling, (LJ may be included as a variant) one develops a rather random and weird way of discovering facts, feelings and faculties about themselves, and about others.  The papered encounter of a lucid mindful process wishing its own enormous space to parade its eruditeness with that of a pragmatist’s penchant for brevity makes for an interesting, often humorous continuum of internal conversation, argument, and at times tempestuous railings about how one should go about expressing oneself.   Before word one has hit the pulp, there has had to have been a compromise-  I found that out, and often a lot of them.  If you’re not up to negotiation or concession, hmmm, journaling may not be a journey you may wish to take. :)

To suggest that the distillation of thought and its eventual realization is a straight forward and simple process is an arguable point which one has to accept as not compromise-able.  It is, or it isn’t.  Well, I’m finding out that it certainly isn’t.  It is demanding, time consuming, and very difficult- for me.  I have to ask again, why then do I choose to journal?  Is it only the desire to discover which gives my pen the impetus to move across the landscapes of life?  Do I need to know the – who, what, when, where, why, and how, of everything?  Do I write because it is so hard on the man and his mind- the challenge.  It seems those particular reasons were good perhaps at the beginning, or if I were an alumnae of the University of Missouri ‘J’ school, but they cannot tool the terrain nor fuel the fires needed for the longer haul now required if my writings are to be meaningful or worthy of the effort.

It seems I received a wonderful gift- an answer.  An answer before I thought to ask its question- sounds biblical (Hebraic).  A recent post- the gift, by a friend, was very ‘on’ point, as well as its commentary.  People out there do care, and spend their lives improving on it.  And I suppose I do too, in my own way and vernacular.  Maybe that is why I wish to write.

 -30-

Other events and musings encourage me to explore further.  Keywords:  Belonging, Care, Love, Obligations, Passions, Life, Death, Reflection, and Legacy.

In my readings of interesting thinkers, some of whom I believe have added significantly to many of my generation’s understandings of who we are, and why we are the way we are, I have found some thought provoking opinions. Twisting at the rope of fate and tugging at the cloth of faith, brings to my mind the works of P.T. de Chardin and Henry Drummond.

PROSE YOU OUGHT TO KNOW

Henry Drummond,  (1852-1907)

An influential contributor to the world of thought from Scotland, Mr. Drummond received his training at Edinburgh and Turbingen Universities, and in 1879 became professor of natural history in the Free Church College of Glasgow.  His scientific interests were permeated with a strong religious earnestness:  and while his travels and researches were recorded with striking accuracy and clearness (as in his “Tropical Africa”), his grasp of facts and principles led him to his most famous book, “Natural Law in the Spiritual World.”  In this, accepting the principal laws of nature as presented by the Evolutionists- biogenesis, conformity to environment, degeneration, death, etc., - Drummond showed a striking correspondence between them and the accepted principles of Christianity, claiming the extension of the same laws from physics to the infinity of metaphysics.  His later book, “The Ascent of Man,” follows the evolution of the body, mind, and higher spiritual life in a little address to students at Northfield, Mass., which has become famous, and from which this is an excerpt.

THE SUPREME GOOD

 Everyone has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world:  What is the summum bonum – the supreme good?  You have life before you.  Once only you can live it.  What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith.  That great word has been the keynote for centuries of the popular religion;  and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world.  Well, we are wrong.  If we have been told that, we may miss the mark.  I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and there we have seen, “The greatest of these is love.”…

Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is.  I ask you to look at it.  It is a compound thing, he tells us.  It is like light.  As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component couloirs- red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow- so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements.  And in these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love.  Will you observe what its elements are?  Will you notice that they have common names;  that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they are things which can be practiced by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:

Patience                       “Love suffereth long.”

Kindness                       “And is kind.”

Generosity                    “Love envieth not.”

Humility                        “Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”

Courtesy                       “Doth not behave itself unseemly.’

Unselfishness                “Seeketh not her own.”

Good Temper                “Is not easily provoked.”

Guilelessness                 “Thinketh no evil.”

Sincerity                       “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.”

 …Patience;  kindness;  generosity;  humility;  courtesy;  unselfishness;  good temper;  guilelessness;  sincerity-  these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man…

Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters.  That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love.  Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love?  Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them.  The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom.  Life is not a holiday, but an education.  And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.   What makes a man a good cricketer?  Practice.  What makes a man good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician?  Practice.  What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer?  Practice.  What makes a man a good man?  Practice.  Nothing else.  There is nothing capricious about religion.  We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, for those in which we get the body and the mind.  If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigour of moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual growth.  Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion.  It is a rich, strong, manly vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character- The Christ like nature in its fullest development.  And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.

(from “The Greatest Thing in the World.”)

A dummie trying to read Photoshop for Dummies only makes for a literate dummie.  I new at it so I'm trying to see what it looks like posted.  No. 1 you can't read the writing!  I'll keep trying.

This painting is a cropped aspect of a much larger painting I'm working on- It is nothing.  Its depiction shows a man reaching out  in wanting  with his left hand and his right is  in denying  or disallowing that which he desires-  Ah!...the painful paradox of our pitiful appetites.  The much larger image of a hand is holding a roman coin- a tribute to Augustus in the historical context of the larger painting.  The large hand likewise is emblematic of the currency of salvation in the painting's religious context.  Conflicting feelings suggests an inner turmoil, or argument yet to be resolved.  It can be painful at times.  Yet that is what we are to do, must do, if we want to continue, to move on, to live.  Pray, make choices, then hope for the best.  And I suppose that's agood'a thing.

The painting is a work in progress, and lacks some
detailing and tonal enhancements.  I think I needed
to post it, because that is what I'm feeling.