Visual art is an interesting medium to be working in. Coming from a background of creative writing, shifting my focus from the written word to implied feeling and storytelling through images has been an adventure. It's taken a long time for me to figure out how I can depict words in pictures. There's so much that goes into it. The colors, warm or cool, how light and dark work together to create a scene, the history or story behind the subject of the painting. Sometimes, what you're painting is just that, something to paint. It doesn't have a deep meaning under it, it's just an exercise. And that's ok! But what's truly magical is when something starts out that way, as an exercise, something to make you do the art, but ends up being something with deep meaning underneath, a meaning that came just through creating, not something you set out to say or do, but something that....just grew.
That's what happened with Forest Floor.
In March, something I'd simultaneously not anticipated but yet always anticipated, happened. I suddenly lost the ability to speak normal sentences. Instead of my words being in the right order, as you see here, they were mixed up, as if my brain had given up on making a clear meaning out of things. Thankfully I could still communicate some, what I said made sense, it just took a lot of translation on the part of the listener. I had a lot less to say. I'm normally a very wordy person. For better or worse (usually worse) I have a lot of opinions, thoughts and ideas, and I'm generally far too eager to share them. But suddenly, I had way less ideas, or the ideas I had were incredibly murky, difficult to articulate, and incomplete.
At the same time as I lost my ability to speak, I also lost (what I was already slowly losing) my ability to walk. My legs wouldn't move when I asked them to. Thankfully, by the mercy of God, we already had my wheelchair here, and I'm daily grateful for it.
When all this happened, my brain was so confused, I couldn't see pictures in my head for awhile. I knew I needed to paint, I needed to keep trying, so I started something. I started on an exercise I've done many times in the past, paint whether you feel like it or not. I went really slowly, I spent days and days working short intervals on this painting. I figured it wouldn't turn out, I had no idea if I could even do it. But then...I got this!
It felt like a miracle. Despite all I had lost, I could still create.
So I kept doing it, and I've ended up with twelve Forest Floor paintings.
Twelve. I still can't believe that. Even though they're all hanging up right across from me.
I decided to call these paintings Forest Floor, for the idea of these brilliant flowers peeping through the leaves, sheltered by giant trees in the darkness of a forest, is exactly what these pieces were meant to say. In the darkness, there is light.Â
I don't know what the rest of this month, the rest of this year, the rest of my life will hold. But I have been learning that no matter how incapable I feel, God is still good, and He gives infinite purpose. There is purpose in the flowers deep in the dark of the forest, even if not many people see them. So I know that whether I'm creating art or not, even if I lose this ability, He will still be glorified in some way that I might not even understand yet.
And if tomorrow, I can't talk again, all my words are disarranged and confused, that's ok, because again, even in that He is good, and He works wondrous things through His loving mercy and suffering He brings.
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