Word of the Week - 40

All art today is the work of Australian Cate Edwards.  The link shows her work much larger than it can be displayed here.

Word of the Week:  TONIC

The art of Cate Edwards revives me, it puts back together parts that have gone asunder.  In her color, lines, shapes, patterns, figures, faces and wordless stories I regroup and find the world as I wish it to be.  There are precarious rides, curious submergings and what appears to be considerable wild abandon, in the best, most life-affirming sense.

In the world away from images that support my soul, I find these to be dark and troubling times.  It may be that times are always dark and troubling.  What I know is my energy and a version of sanity are better served by stepping back from public debate.  I choose not to express outrage through social media.  I prefer to bring light of a sort.  As a friend wisely wrote a day or so ago, art will not save us but it may cushion the fall.  Art gives us everything it has, whether we create it or observe.  Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  Right now, this is the way I can practice such advice.

I would love to be one of Cate Edwards' humans, to inhabit a flowered bowl, pose with my swimsuit-clad sisters near a pool or the sea, commune with other Earth creatures, continually surprised by the circumstance in which we find ourselves.  Her work proves to me the connection between eyes and heart for as I scan her leaves and flowers, ornaments, marks and groupings, I have a physiological response, a quickened pulse, accompanied by a sense of longing.  I want this to be our world.