Are you mended with gold???

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful - Billie Mobayed

 We Are Glass

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/we-are-glass-lianne-schneider.html

I've read in countless spiritual guides, self-help books, motivational guides that we are all "broken" in some way. Throughout the course of life, events conspire to break us - we suffer losses, disappointments, heartbreak, failure and sometimes what feels like endless struggle. Someone I love dearly is having a "breakdown" - that's what they call the loss of touch with reality that comes from a steady diet of psychological pain. Even if the situation is not so dire for us, we've all experienced moments, perhaps days or weeks when we felt just shattered by circumstances. But the question for me has always been whether being broken means broken down or broken open. There's a huge difference and I've written numerous poems about that thought over the past few years. It seems to me that if we are all broken in some way, what counts is how we put ourselves back together! 

What if we could see ourselves and others as perfectly imperfect...patched with the gold of the lessons we've learned and the vulnerability we've accepted without the shame that usually haunts us because we're "not good enough" or we're "weak" or "afraid?" What if we could see ourselves as more beautiful because we're damaged and imperfect and because we've been broken open by our suffering, exposing the deeper heart and soul of who we are and finding that lovelier than we ever knew was possible? What if we could accept our wounds as important and even possibly necessary aspects of our own "soul" development? (You don't have to believe in the religious definition of soul to understand what I mean but if you prefer, use spirit or heart or just plain human). What if we could accept that as Leonard Cohen wrote in the lyrics to Anthem, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in"?

"Pain is the great teacher," said writer May Sarton, so what if we could study the lessons and find the gold or the light that makes us more beautiful than ever. This is how I expressed it in the poem I wrote at the same time as I created this image:

IN THE SHATTERING

Shattered -
the fragile glass of me is shattered,
crushed and broken into tiny shards
now reflecting, diamond-like,
a thousand points of light -
magnifying what had once been
but a solitary beam, diffuse, opaque -
as if in the final breaking,
the small, soft, subtle glow,
so long and well contained within
the shape that was the whole of me
is now free to sparkle all the more -
brilliantly, blindingly more -
each crystal sliver multiplying
radiance only dimly shown before.

How could I have known
when I was whole and empty
that it would be in breaking
that I would shine so brightly,
be more luminously transparent,
with a glory all out of proportion
to the pain of the shattering itself?
How could I know that I held
a million different joys inside
just waiting for release?
How could I know that I
was never meant to confine
the light of the Divine inside
but was always and eternally
envisioned in the mind of God,
as each of us is truly meant,
to be at last its sacred shine?

                     Copyright Lianne Schneider 2014

All art and poetry unless otherwise noted is the intellectual and artistic property of Lianne Schneider and may not be copied, reprinted, reblogged in its entirey without the express permission of the author.  

...in the eye of the beholder.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

― Confucius

Begonia Shadows
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/begonia-shadows-ii-painting-lianne-schneider.html?newartwork=true  

Years ago, Ray Stevens sang:

              

                  Everything is beautiful in its own way.

                  Like the starry summer night, or a snow-covered winter's day.

                 And everybody's beautiful in their own way.

                 Under God's heaven, the world's gonna find the way.”

For most of us, it’s easy to see the beauty in a delicate flower, a summer day, the sparkle of sun on the  water or the glory of a child’s smile. And as an artist, I wanted to portray that – the light within the natural beauty of the world around me. I couldn’t visualize myself creating something dark or moody, some abstraction of violence or negative energy. So I’ve often dismissed my own art as nothing but “pretty pictures” – without the depth or substance that artists who could present the darker aspects of life seem to have. And yet, I could write from that space – write of anger, betrayal, hurt, loss, loneliness and fear. Still when I went to convert those poems into images to go with them, I seemed to wind up with “pretty pictures.” Then it hit me…I took a good look at this painting, at its title, and I realized why I was so focused on light and pretty. As I painted from a lighter, softer photograph, I unconsciously darkened the shadows in these fluted petals. You see, the shadows are essential here. They provide the sharp contrast to the light within – without those shadows this flower would be one dimensional, flat and lifeless.  Instead, this begonia now looks as if it swallowed the sun. In life, as in art, the shadows are only important for the lessons they have hidden beneath them and for the stark contrast they provide for all that is hopeful and joyous. I realized, too, that I look for the light even within the darkest art and I always find it – a reflection, an edge, the sheen of a ridge of dark paint – and it is there I find the beauty of each work of art I see.  My own "pretty pictures" would be empty of meaning as well without the shadows to draw the eye towards the light. 

Still, it’s harder to find the beautiful in something very dark unless you have the inner vision to see it – like these two incredible artists whose black and white works are dark, mysterious, fearsome, even occasionally depressing…that is until you look closer…and find the extraordinary beauty in the light amidst the shadows.

David Foster aka Ragman whose work on Red Bubble and BlueCanvas will completely captivate you, mesmerize you...even haunt you will keep you spellbound for hours. Or go browse Bob Orsillo's portfolio on Fine Art America and get caught up in the awesome but beautiful power of his gritty black and white images.  

I look at these stunning, dark and yet powerfully beautiful images – and as Chief Dan George once said, “My heart soars.”