Longing

After reading about the longing in Rumi’s poetry as well as those of San Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Ávila, I decided I wanted to try to think “visually” about this central human state. This was one of the hardest paintings I’ve done so far because it required me to think visually, in a way very different than I do most of my days as a student here. I found myself asking “What does longing look like, through color, composition?”

I also noticed that the experience of painting feels very similar to what I can grasp so far of mysticism, where the process is just as if not more important than the result, and the knowledge that is revealed through the struggle leads to some significant level of insight.

Original painting is oil and acrylic on canvas, 12 x 16 in.