painting

if music was born out of grief, painting was born out of transience within an immortal universe. painting is the charmed presence of what will no longer be there. an enchanted absence, a visible dream, a parallel universe, defying death, underlining life’s brevity. it is a vision of life from hades enchanted. it is the secret history of light, the psychodrama of colour, the moment in a mind, the moment in a song. painting is life, life smiling at death with light as its secret. painting is narcissus surprised.

painting is an inscription on the flesh of time. painting is the triumph of plants and minerals and animal hair. it is soul dancing to soul. painting is the still life of god’s mind. painting is the only mortal space where angels dwell in stillness. it is meditation with eyes wide open, contemplation with the mind’s eyes focused on enigmas. it is visualisation materialised. the mind’s strength and grace trembling in space. the unending lesson of the ascending spirit. painting is the tentative deciphering of destiny, the visual haiku of human history, musings of life in deep dimensions.

painting is human love transcending human forgetfulness. it is mortality staring at itself in the evanescent mirror of immortality. it is spaces dancing, dimensions interacting, realms interpenetrating, time zones colliding, eliding, harmonising. painting is the shaman’s mirror, the warrior’s truest shield, the healer’s armour against fate and tragedy. the celebration of light.

painting is one of the earliest tools of survival. you painted a thing first then you made it manifest later. there is painting of the mind, where you first create the complete form of a thing or dream or desire and feed it deep into the spirit’s factory for the production of reality. painting is the mirror of healing, the base of creativity, the spring-board of materialisation. painting is the mathematics of making things possible. it is planting notions in the subconscious through the allure or disturbance of the eyes.

great paintings transcend the eyes and, through other agencies, can be transmitted from soul to soul. all dreamers are spirit painters. all dreams are paintings. all spirit painters are world remakers. painting is the refresher of love, the aider of love, the incarnation of loving. painting is time multiplied by light. painting is where the dead sleep, where the labyrinth is decoded. it is the secret film of the gods, the ecstasy of dyes, the paradigm of better ways of being.

painting is the illuminated record book of invisible realms seen in glimpses. intimations of reincarnation. akashic still-points. painting is indeed one of the places where hades is averted. it is the hint of a sort of immortality within. it comes from the same place inside us where gods are born.

painting is one of the most mysterious metaphors of arcadia.

ben okri – in arcadia (2002)