Have you ever witnessed an act of such compassion that it took your breath away?...I had that experience last night...
When I knew I would be coming to Whidbey Island, I signed up to take an Encaustic Photography class...it turned out to be the instructor and eight fantastic women...some of them very good artists...one of them my next-door neighbor...or more specifically, Michaelene's next-door neighbor...indeed it is a small world on the island...
At the end of our class, our instructor Kim Tinuviel asked each of us to present our work, and talk about what we had learned...what we had difficulty with...what tips we might want to share with each other...
The last woman to speak had created two pieces of work...both related to her daughter...a 10-year old child who had died six months earlier...one piece contained the most amazing photos...four in all...each of her daughter sitting astride different horses...in the same position each time...her arms outstretched around the horses neck and her face buried in its mane...in the most powerful of the four, the child was bare naked, riding bareback...mud up to her knees...free and wild and loving life...
The second piece contained as its center a piece of art the daughter had created...the mother had surrounded it with feathers and other objects that had meaning to them both...when it was her turn to speak, she shared that the piece felt incomplete...that she wasn't sure the liked the background...that it hadn't turned out as she had wanted...
This is the moment Kim asked if it was alright to share what she saw...when the woman invited her to do so, Kim talked first about its composition...about how each element contributed to the whole...about how it was especially lovely...and meaningful...that it began as a piece of her daughter's artwork that had now transformed into a piece of her own...how it had many of the qualities of primitive art, which is often about some aspect of the artist's life...and, finally, how lovely it would look hanging, especially on a colored wall...
As Kim spoke, everyone in the room grew quiet...quite something for a group so raucous...more importantly, as she listened to Kim's words, the mother's experience of her own artwork began to shift...as she moved to acceptance and appreciation, I could feel it in her body language...I could see her face visibly soften...and her eyes light up, if only a little...and I don't know about any of the others in the room, and in that moment I could feel her child beaming....just like in the photo...free and wild and loving life...
"Storm Surge Quasar" by Kim Tinuviel 12" x 12" Encaustic...see more of her work at www.kimtinuviel.com