an introduction...
 
The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.  It is a symbol that represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life and of coming full circle.  It is an ancient whisper that speaks of the eternal return: the cycles of life, death and rebirth leading to immortality.  Like an old and ancient beautiful thread, the colors of the Ouroboros are woven throughout time in the Stories of phoenix, dragons, serpents and snakes. 
 
I have come to believe that inside the belly of this ancient snake whom eats its own tail, lies the ooze of primordial unity.  Primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting before any beginning with such force and qualities it cannot be extinguished.  Within that ooze lies the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual.  The ooze from an ocean from which all is born and where all is One.  It is from this ocean of ooze that my Story, my tale is born.  It is a Story born in a place far away from the concerns or constraints of ticking clocks and time as we have currently come to know it.  This tale is seeped in an embryonic fluid that moves through time.  Past, present, future and the unknown all swimming together in non-linear form and function.  It is from this place that this tale has been woven.
 
As I followed the trails of this Story, I found myself wondering; could our lives, our personal Stories, our collective Stories, the Stories of all mankind, the Stories of all kind and beyond be from the vast waters of this primordial ocean, from this place which, like the Ouroboros, has no beginning or end?  Is it possible that the waters from this ocean swell and rise within us giving rise and fall to our memories and the memories of our origins?  Do these waters direct the rhythm and flow of our Stories and our lives?  A perpetual pumping of liquid memory that flows through the vessel of our beings in a way that allows us to be continually reborn.  If we are reborn in this manner does our birthing hold the possibility of remembering the source of our origins and the agreements that we have made with the source of our existence?  Could this liquid, this memory, be a form of Medicine that could benefit humanity and the magnificent world that we all share and which is in desperate need?
 
I wondered if it is us/we who navigate the rivers and oceans of our lives or are the rivers and the oceans the captains of our sailing and sinking ships, navigating us on a journey that reveals our individual purpose within the Story that we are all a part of?  Are we like that ancient snake, both swallowing and disgorging ourselves in an all consuming yarn: each of us following our individual threads in order to be lead to our collective and shared story; a beautiful, expressive unraveling?  If we become aware of our relationships with these waters, if we become aware that we are not separate from these waters, are we then able to see its and our own passage through time and space?  Are we then able to see that we are all swimming in the same primordial water?
 
I began to think that perhaps the answers to these questions were unimportant.  Perhaps what matters, what is of importance, lies within the seeking of these questions and their answers? Perhaps what matters is being willing. Willing to enter into the mouth of the serpent knowing that you will eventually become the tail that will spiral its way back around and enter into the mouth once again.  Willing to become part of the food and part of the Story.  Willing to acknowledge our individual responsibility and part in an eternal return.  Willing to live a life that is an honoring and remembering of the cycles of life, death and rebirth that leads to immortality and the feeding of an incomprehensibly beautiful dance. These are the question and thoughts that line the trail that I have been following.  It is this tale that I have followed in seeking the trailhead.  It is this tale that has become the tail of the Ouroboros which is forever seeking the mouth.

The Dream

Is it possible to notice, mark and observe where one event or life altering occurrence ends and another begins?  Is there an interval, a pause, a beat between the spaces of these happenings that can be seen and felt?  I believe that there is.

Underneath or covered by the paint on "Interstitial" lies an entire world.  In many ways, this world can only be glimpsed by the visible texture on the canvas.   In April of this year I had an especially significant dream.  This is one of those dreams that when it is "over" your eyes open and you awake with  an intense  feeling of having shaken hands with the harbinger of your life.  It was a dream that foretold of events yet to unfold.  One that warned, prepared and communicated messages of happenings and transitions soon to come to pass.  One of the messages of the dream was that of my father's passing.    As with most significant and powerful dreams it rolled around in my subconscious and would periodically rise to the surface of my awareness - particularly as the events of the waking world began to match up and meet those foretold in the dream.  Then there was that particular morning in May.  The one in which I awoke and the knew.  The very air around me that I was breathing and moving through was different.  My father had departed from this world in the night.  Slipping past the veil as he slept. 

The painting began then...images of and from the dream mixing with images of the messages that had recently been received in the waking world.  The painting speaking the language of riddles and dream.  Ominous, surreal, heavy, otherworldly and filled with the magic and portent of the space between the worlds. 


The Painting

My hands, being, imagination worked those images, the paint, the canvas and my soul  for over a month...weaving this world and the passing days with those of the dream and the journey of my father and his story, our story.  After a month's work I sat in front of the highly textured canvas - with the exception of my signature and a final coat of sealing glaze I believed it to be complete.  The painting sat on the easel for an additional 24 hours.  The next time I approached it, I sat in front of it...I looked...I listened...I felt into it with as much of my senses and being as I could possibly muster...and then...I picked up the container of white gesso  and did something that I have never done before...I completely covered the completed painting in a layer of white and new beginning.  In a way that I have never done before...I let go.

It was not an attempt to erase, forget, hide or escape the dream, its' messages, the grief, my father's death, or the messages of additional transitions yet to come.  Rather, it was a new way of being moved.  In the week that followed and with no particular end point or final destination held within the boundaries of my mind...fresh paint began to fall upon the canvas.  The paint was laid over the highly textured white canvas...with my eyes softened and seeing into those places in-between.  In the pause, in the intervals, the interstices of time told the story and rose to the surface and "Interstitial" reached out to make contact and touch me.

There are 13 additional paintings that are currently in progress.  13 paintings that speak to and are a study on and experience of those places and spaces of Interstice.  Places formed by the spaces in between, what they hold, what is hidden and revealed in the play and conversation  between light and dark, known and unknown, past and present, dream and waking.

These paintings are an invitation.  I am a being born of the places of in-between, of the borderlands, of the interstices.  Can I reach out from these places?  Can I touch you?  Can I communicate a piece of a story that I do not hold all of the threads of and to?  Can I weave the mystery so you too can be moved?  Can I do this is such a way that when you touch or come into contact with the places of in-between, the interstice, you can feel the bridge that unites them both under your feet?  I am currently standing on one of these such bridges between here and there.

I have come to understand that there are Stories that Call.  Ancient Stories that whisper and speak through symbols, messages, and dreams.  Stories that remember ancient agreements and the meaning and purpose of our existence.  Stories that are Medicine in the truest sense of the word.  I believe that these Stories find ways of reemerging and being born again into our modern society so that we as a people may remember who we are.  My particular Story is carried on the vehicle of the Borderlands and the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros. 

Let us think of the Borderlands as a place where worlds touch and through their contact, a third or new world is born; a world that inhabits the spaces of in between, a world that serves as bridge, door and portal between the two.  It is through the portal of the Borderlands that I first heard the whispers of the Ouroboros.

We are the magical and physical realization of our ancestors.  Whether we know it or not, I believe that we are carrying the medicine bundles which have been passed down to us through generations.  Whether we are aware or not, I believe that we are seeking to fulfill a legacy of our ancestors’ grail quests and dreams.  We are a walking legacy.

I am of the Borderlands...and I am not alone.