Work and Love: Year of the Dragon

What are you bringing to life these days?

People all over the world celebrated the Chinese New Year this past week. Apparently, we should expect a big baby boom  because the dragon is such a lucky sign to be born under. I think this lucky blessedness holds true for bringing creative work to life as well, and right now, we are in a fortuitous place with Flight of the Mind: A Painter's Journey through Paralysis. 


The text is undergoing revision for the final draft, which is a tender and meaningful process. And Lydia Inglett is at work on the design and layout. We are getting glimpses of how the book will look, feel and sound, which heightens our expectations! Indeed, it is as if we are "expecting" in the parental sense of the word, and even when we are dreaming, we are preparing a space for our love and hard work to be at home in the world.

This weekend, Marcus and Anne return to the Naples Invitational Art Fest in Florida, where last year, Marcus won Best of Show. If you are anywhere close to Naples, stop by to see the evidence of their work and love in person.

In the next few days and weeks, we will chronicle progress on the book and use the blog to fine-tune some of the sections, testing out names on you, our faithful audience. You are part of this too, and just as it takes a community to raise a healthy child, without your receiving eyes and ears, we'd just be whistling in the dark (which has its merits, but becomes rather lonely). So thank you, and please join us as we expect the best and continue the work of bringing our love into the light of day.

Epiphany! - Ere We Are Aware . . .

The egret warrants attention.
Between the portrait and the pineapple,  the bird is an epiphany.

This weekend (Friday to be exact) was the holiday of Epiphany. Epiphany is the Christian celebration of the incarnation - god made human. The day is used to mark the wisemen's journey, against all odds and caution, in search of a baby born in extreme circumstances, to unwed parents sheltering in a barn at a wayside inn on the edge of nowhere. Many traditions also celebrate the baptism of Jesus - the quintessential true-identity story of a man revealed as the long-awaited hero of people forsaken and forgotten.

Epiphany marks a date of revelation and recognition, and it comes about the time that, here in a temperate climate, noticeably warm this year, I start planning a spring garden. Epiphany has me cleaning out pots and trays, calculating when to start the seeds that, hopefully, will feed us a couple short months from now. At epiphany, even if the world is cold and gloomy, the hope of spring needs preparing for. Nature, even while dormant, calls us to be aware.

Here on the blog for Marcus' book, epiphany begins a season to plant some seeds of the metaphorical variety. The book, Flight of the Mind: A Painter's Journey through Paralysis, which is ripening as we dream through these long nights, will be released in the summer - a balmy dream from today. But as it ripens, we want to explore some of the ideas, feelings and revelations Marcus' story and work brings to our attention.

The wise men on a quest to redeem their souls.

"In God's wildness lies the hope of the world," proclaims the environmentalist and naturalist John Muir, writing a century ago, but leaving clues for our time, when natural wonder is at stake. We can find hope in "the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness, [where t]he galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware."

Regardless of time, religion, culture or upbringing, the natural world,"God's wildness," is calling us to be aware, for our own healing. Maybe it's the birds we can't help but notice, maybe it's the unseasonable weather, maybe it's the light that wakes us at sunrise or makes us sad at twilight. Something sacred, absolutely incarnate and revelatory needs our attention.

My worktable is littered with gardening books that are calling me back. Marcus' artwork also calls us back, to a world that we've missed, to a revelatory world of miracles, magic and reality, which is an epiphany - when magic and reality collide.

Please tell us about your own epiphanies and check back here for Marcus' and my own reflections on nature, religion, and whatever moves us to pay attention and share with you.

Poetic and Prophetic

The new year arrives, healthy and pink with promise.

Happy New Year! This year we celebrate good work and great love. May the year 2012 sharpen our mind's eye and our sense of kairos. We look forward to many good and magical moments, and a continued Flight of the Mind.

Check out this beautifully written article about Marcus' work in Asheville's Bold Life magazine, "The Mind's Eye," by Ursula Gullow.

Check back here, or subscribe, for new-year updates on the progress of the book, Flight of the Mind, and painterly musings on subjects dear to our heart.

Yo Yo Yo, Merry Christmas

That first painted image,"Cosmic Christmas" ignited an energy that continues to gather strength. Entering my 25th year as a painter, Anne and I celebrate the past while focusing with great excitement on the future. EYES WIDE OPEN !
Merry Christmas and best wishes for a wonderful New Year.
Sincerely,
Marcus,Anne,Bell

Yo!: How To Have a Cosmic Christmas

Several weeks before the Christmas of 1986, less than nine months after the accident, Anne and Marcus' sister Amanda presented Marcus with a set of Crayola watercolors and unknowingly awakened a talent in Marcus that would turn out to be a gift to so many others.

Marcus took up the paintbrush, in the spirit of fun, and his first work was a Christmas card (pictured). The message it carried was more than just a holiday wish. His triumphant “Yo!” signaled to everyone his definitive take on the situation.  Rather than gloom or depression, the drawing attests to Marcus’ simple joy in being alive and his pleasure in this new-found form of expression. Twenty-five years since the accident that paralyzed him, Marcus still paints in the spirit of love and fun, touching lives with tenderness and wonder.

There's an ancient Hindu story about a man who spent his lifetime begging by the city gates, always at the brink of starvation, clothed in rags. After awhile, he died, and after another several years the city decided to enlarge the gateway. During the excavation, the municipal workers turned up the earth on which the beggar had stood, sat and slept for those many years. Underneath the very spot, they discovered a priceless treasure, enough to feed and clothe any number of men for any number of lifetimes. All along, the story goes, within touching distance of the hapless beggar's feet great riches lay buried, worth many times more than what he needed to survive and live abundantly. What a cosmic event that might have been! If only the beggar had ever paused to consider what lay underneath the layers both of himself and the world.

We need more messages like the message of Marcus' first Christmas card: signs, poems,  paintings, gestures that point the way to the treasure hidden shallowly beneath the surface of our everyday struggle, hungers and chills. It is in the same spirit of love and wonder that we wish all our friends and family,
Merry Cosmic Christmas! 

PS: Happy solstice all! There's nothing like the shortest day and longest night to heighten your sense of time. ;')

Magical realism

Imagine: you are walking along the beach. In a tidal pool reflecting the day's last light, you discover beautiful shells, larger than any you've encountered before. The wind dies; the only sound is the echo of the ocean from the shells, which sounds like your own heartbeat, or could that be the flapping of wings? 

Nature performs magical feats by the millions every minute. But, busy with our private concerns and human interests, we often fail to notice nature's miracles . . . until someone shows us the world anew and wakes us up to the extraordinary quality of ordinary time.

Marcus is an artist who wakes us up. To borrow from literary terms, Marcus’ paintings, provocative and miraculous, are an instance of magical realism. He crafts scenes that defy the rules of the real world and in doing so, reveals a truth about this world we call home, and take for granted.  We willingly follow his lead, suspending disbelief because he creates a reality we only need to be shown to believe in.

"For the hard of hearing you shout, and for the near-blind you draw in large and startling figures," says Flannery O'Connor, a writer whose style anticipated the power of magical realism.

Realistic, accurately rendered elements in fanciful, impossible scenes evoke strong feelings.  Through his use of mystery and metaphor, mediating between reality and imagination, Marcus opens up a world and invites us along on an epic journey.

The invitation is the same invitation  issued by Nature, day after day, with her miracles. This winter, wake up to the world revealed anew.  The Geminid meteor shower tonight and the Christmas Bird Count are both  good ways to jump-start your belief in miracles and join Marcus on a journey which promises to be both very magical and very real.

The Labor of Love

Anne in a sea of photos, selecting the perfect images for each page.

The 25-year artistic career of Marcus and Anne Thomas is best described in  images. Their life and work together has been well documented by Anne, who has an eye for meaning in the ordinary, and an intuition for how their particular story touches a universal longing.

Anne collects and records the memories; the retrospective requires her eyes on the artist as he grows, creates and evolves, as much as it requires the eye of the artist himself.  She has documented Marcus, his work and their life together over the last quarter-century, plus a few years, those years before the accident. Her diligence is a labor of love which gives flesh and blood to the words describing their journey together.

So, as anyone who has loved for long can imagine, when it came to sorting through 25 years of life in images, it was certainly a labor of love! From the photos of Marcus as a young athlete, to his time of transition adjusting to paralysis, to photos of him at work painting his latest masterpiece, not to mention the images Anne has carefully recreated from his original paintings, she can show us the evolution of their love and art.

To Anne we owe this next exciting stage of the journey of creating this retrospective. The images have been selected, and putting pictures to the story is like putting words to music. Stay tuned for perhaps a few sneak peeks and maybe even a photo essay. . .