When bad things happen like the tornadoes in Oklahoma with lives lost suddenly, you start to think about living in the moment. After all that moment might be all you have, and you should appreciate it to the fullest.
My mother used to tell me to "wake up and smell the roses". She worried that I "burned the candle at both ends". Mother was right about that, and I still do. However, I am thinking more about living in the present and enjoying the flowers in bloom and the beautiful sunsets which I have always appreciated but perhaps never quite enough.
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| "Portal to Forever" acrylic painting ©Mary Montague Sikes |
Sometimes I create paintings that make me think. "Portal to Forever" is one of those. A few years ago, I stood inside one of the smaller buildings excavated from the jungles at Palenque in Southern Mexico. It was part of the Maya Ruins from long ago. I started to think of the people who stood in that place before me. I stared through the portal, across the massive foliage that led to Guatemala, and wondered about the past. I took 35mm color slides of the scene that would later serve as reference photos for my paintings.
Was I living in the moment that day in Palenque? Or was I living in the past? I remember that I looked across into forever. Are forever and the present one and the same?
I don't know. Do you?
Tides Inn Art Show
Memorial Day Weekend, May 25 and 26, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., I'll have books to sign and will paint at the Art Market, Tides Inn in Irvington VA.
