Rupture

The exploration shown here, Rupture, begins by forming a circle with rust pigment and then adding ink pigments made from dyers polypore, black walnut, lichen and red cabbage. The

placement of inks is by impulse ~ as if randomly guided. I am completely absorbed by the alchemy happening before me on the page. When I finish, the image is dark and murky but by the next day the inks spread and settle and come alive with illuminated vibrancy, which amaze, delight and enchant me.

The image draws me in to its primordial world, which evokes a sense of bursting open… rupturing and I can’t help but wonder if, through the rupture, we can tumble toward the origin…toward the light of creative imagination that has always been there.

By origin I am speaking about origin without origin (or beginning) ~ a place where things emerge from ~ a place of constant almost/almost understanding ~ a place where everything is able to come into being.

The process of rupturing takes many forms ~ breaking, fracturing, tearing, bursting open ~ and can be experienced individually, culturally and even globally with the climate crisis. If I look back on my lived experience I can see the many ways rupture has shown up and what is even more mysterious and miraculous is the tender process of repair that stitches us back together in ways we never could have imagined.

I don’t think we get to avoid rupture through our lived experience as humans, whether that be a fracturing of bones, breaking of spirit, deep loss, and/or disconnection from soul/earth through trauma, but I do wonder about the communities we build around us that enable us to turn toward suffering and pain versus retreating further into isolation that comes from turning away. Perhaps it matters not so much what causes the rupture but how we are emboldened to live through and with the particular experience that has broken us open.