Under the Sheets of Rain

Under the Sheets of Rain / 18" x 24" / acrylic paint on canvas / 11.25.2016

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Change can come in an instant, forever changing the landscape that is familiar and known. Change can be subtle and unseen, moving under the surface undetected until it is ready to show its new form, its tender untouched skin.

Prior to 2012 I lived in the same location for 15 years. I had come to know this place and I had come to know my place within it. In the five years that followed, I inhabited and/or established 12 different dwellings, 12 different homes, 11 of which I personally lived in for various moments or lengths of time.

The cycle of the last 18 months, a year and a half as we currently mark the passage of time has been one in which unforeseeable changes, transitions, beginnings and endings have continually rolled over my internal and external landscapes with the unpredictable movement of a great and massive body of water, like the coming of a storm that lingers, shapeshifts and takes new and uncertain forms.  I said goodbye to my father as I knew him in this world to be. Five months following his passing I would care for my mother as she too took her leave of this earthly plane. I have walked and lived on the desert sands of the southwest and I have stood at the shores of the Mother Ocean and tasted her salted memory. I have returned to the land that birthed and raised me: revisiting what had formed and began my construction as the being that I had come to know myself to be. I lived through the season which I have come to call My Winter in the House of Ashes; four containers of those who had passed grouped in passage in their respective urns. I welcomed a new love into my arms and I opened my arms to release a love that I no longer knew how to hold. I have watched as one of my four legged companions, a teacher and a friend diminished quickly from this world, leaving another void and space that echoed with what once was. I lost and found myself, unsure of what remained, forever changed by the movements of lives and the marching of time.

I am inhabiting a new place, a new home once more. One previously unknown to me. I am in many ways unknown to myself. I am a creature who deeply inhabits, one whose foundation reaches out like the roots of a tree, connecting to the soil in which it has grown, from which it has come. What happens when the soil is scorched by the cleansing of a great fire? What happens when the forest burns and your roots, your foundation no longer stands as it once did? What happens during the period of time when the landscape lies dormant in appearance, cleared of what had once grown? Is it possible to become quiet and still while the life underneath connects to the nutrient rich ashes in order to begin to push up and live again? I have asked myself if I can be comfortable not knowing what that new form, that new life will take.  

Under the Sheets of Rain was the first painting that I completed after my Mother's Death.  The paintings always come first.  Until a feeling or experience has been moved through me by means of image, color, paint, I often struggle with "words" for they are not my first, best or preferred language.  Under the Sheets of Rain was painted while I lived in the home my parents' had built a life in.  A period of time which is included in a chapter of my life that I think of as the Interstice - an intervening space, or an interval between spaces and times.

Under the Sheets of Rain


I smelled the coming of the rains
aroma of incense washing away flesh, bone, blood, remains

I felt each raindrop as it fell
becoming part, indistinguishable from the rising swell

I heard the moisture fall around
I am the voice of its collected flowing, the naming of its sound

I tasted the salt of a torrent of tears
collected waters of lives and rivers held in divine liquid spheres

I saw the world mirrored in every drop
merging into awareness, absence of separation; no start, no stop


I am under the sheets of rain
blanketed in waters of waking and sleeping
I am under the sheets of rain
sheathed in memories and weeping
I am under the sheets of rain
days and nights passing without number
I am under the sheets of rain
descending like a curtain of uncertain slumber

obscuring what I believed to have known
obscuring what I believed myself to be

until

the force of its falling was caressing my skin
reminding me of what must wash away and what life chooses to begin

I am under the sheets of rain
it has soothed the burning pain, fire of rebirth
I am under the sheets of rain
a seed receiving nutrients deep within earth
I am under the sheets of rain
vision washed clean by elements hidden, revealed, seen
I am under the sheets of rain
re-membering how beauty can be transmuted by pain


I smelled the coming of the rains
aroma of incense washing away flesh, bone, blood, remains

I felt each raindrop as it fell
becoming part, indistinguishable from the rising swell

I heard the moisture fall around
I am the voice of its collected flowing, the naming of its sound

I tasted the salt of a torrent of tears
collected waters of lives and rivers held in divine liquid spheres

I saw the world mirrored in every drop
merging into awareness, absence of separation; no start, no stop

As always, I thank you for the moments you choose to enter my world.   My Hands, Your Hands,

In beauty, love and art,
​~Heather

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