Wild Beasts and Angels - Images from Lockdown

Given that we had to limit Christmas to one day and New Year became non existent I was left with some spare time. Which is rare. I tend to paint in bursts. This burst came out of the frustrations of Lockdown. I painted. Not hundreds but a good few, which is rare for me. I tend to loose energy fairly quickly but I had time and I had something that needed to get out.

Unusually for me I went for trees. In all the frustration there has always been a light. A something beyond. On the edge of the forest but still unable to get through. Trapped by bars that are almost imperceptible, that should be easy to wander past but which hold us tight; longing for the freedon beyond.

But always the light. Something leading me on. The divine. The entrapment is real enough. Cut off from physical contact with family, friends and colleagues. The lack of human contact is barbed.
Yet there is a freedom in the breaking of established patterns. A new way to see things and a new way to be; if only we could grasp them. If only we weren't held back by this forest of inertia.

Sometimes even what holds us is unidentifiable, indistinguishable, diseased. All we have held, melting away in a glorious entropy. But filled with the energy of possibility. A creationable force and life that can vision the new and engage in the unforeseen impossible. What new worlds can be breathed into life as the old melts before us?

In the soup of possibility is God. Always has been. Moving in, through, around all that is. God is all that is. Working with us, alongside us. Inspiring us to change, to rescue, to renew. To dream beyond our dreams, to seek out the other. To refresh and re-create. Form consolidates from the formless void.

And this unnerving wilderness place is filled with wild beasts who question our very selves. Are we to be devoured by our own sense of insignificance? The world can stop and without concern can dispose of us. Unnecessary, unneeded and unnoticed. The beats are there, stifling our thought, deflating our heart. 
Yet, so are the angels. Messengers of God. The communicators of love. The bringers of reason. Ever hopeful, ever ready to tell us we are.  Their being and  our being changes everything. We are bound with the energy of life and the destiny of death - the gateway to eternity. In the now we wrestle the beasts and allow ourselves to be held by the angels.