Listening to an On the BlackChair interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6cHlBfgxU with Orion Foxwood (a Southern Root Magic and Appalachian Conjure Man) as I re-work an incarnation of the painting I call Soul Retrieval.
Regarding the painting process: eight hours later, i don’t love it, but there's an improvement. If I've learned anything from the last go at this work, it was to have a bit more restraint regarding the impulse to smooth things over and even things out. Be lighter. Put some color somewhere and walk away. See what reveals itself in it’s own time. Today it was the sky above yesterdays swim in Puffer’s Pond: stormy blue purple with grey - pink clouds on one side and then on the other, the grey-gold-pink sky with clouds like smudges of payne’s ink. I saw this come into being on the canvas and felt the connection between gazing at and immersing in phenomena and how that experience comes through me and is expressed, (something like that).
Gleanings from the BlackChair: if you want to connect with the unseen world, start with your ancestors. Your ancestors, (deceased blood relatives) are connected to you even if you don’t know their names or who they were physically when they lived on earth. You can make a place in your home for them, acknowledging the lineage that gave rise to the embodiment that you are. Put pictures of them, food they liked, a paper with their names in this place. This is not about ‘believing in’ something or having ‘faith’ it is about how you conduct yourself in your life, what you acknowledge, what you invite in. What you remember.