Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM
by Megan Sturges, © 2012
My practice in the studio is about giving life to the unconscious image in specific form through my hands and eyes – bringing it into this world of color and form through the embodied sense of yes or no, here or there, connecting, separating, line, shape, object, pattern. Like dreams, the images find me and then form together into an integrated flow, or bigger picture of the energy emerging from below the surface of my life. Making connections in a collage by painting into and through and between the images allows greater meaning to emerge. Later I invite imagination to re-work the visual image into poem or narrative – bringing a place of parable, metaphor, koan, dream logic – a verbal coherence not based on understanding or interpretation, but rather experienced in the body, mind, and heart of the creative space of liminality where new structures of experience can emerge, grow, be held and nourished. Below is the poem that came in response to the collage image above (© 2012).
More of my work can be found at www.mlvs-arts.com.
THE BEAUTY OF TWISTS AND TURNS
A strong above and below
Two sides, what’s left and what’s right.
The Lynx sits, nestled, waiting, in dark crags, watching
He looks out, direct, like the girl that’s left,
Holding on tight, direct unwavering stare
Old gnarled tree, twisted and coiled from so many years of living
The beauty of twists and turns, adapting unplanned,
Responding to the momentary demand,
Finding ways to grow around when the straight and clear path is blocked.
The roots of the old wood seem to feed on air,
Touching the stone lion’s back, the ancient sculpture guarding the doorway.
Red robed people move back and forth,
Silently knitting the worlds together
Kneeling, walking, watching, waiting
Bringing pieces of the green land into the blackened earth
Belly button of the world, the circled center,
washed by the tides of a changing sea
Dark waters and bright,
land greening on the edges until it bursts into flames of flower
Beneath the arching canopy spread by the woman rising
Clearing wind, the breeze fresh with dawning.
