untitled (#7)

Piemonte, Italy

900 x 1000
painting, scraping, sanding;
stretched canvas, laminated papers,
acrylic paints

This work is another one of those that found its meaning a long time after its making. Layers of papers and paint were built up on the canvas and sanded back. In the process the beam of white light appeared where a particular paper was less resistant to the sandpaper.
Much later it was hanging in my sanctuary in Queensland when I happened to be reading the Ten Ox Herding Stories – a well known illustrated Zen story about the apparent process of 'awakening'. At #7, I read:

Astride the bull, I reach home. I am serene. The bull too can rest. The dawn has come. In blissful repose, within my thatched dwelling I have abandoned the whip and rope.

And in the commentary:
One path of clear light travels on throughout endless time.

I looked up at the painting and at last knew what it was about. All that building up of a phenomenal surface-self, all that sanding back!

©miriam louisa simons