Changing Attitudes

Between dust and dust
there is very little time
and very little space
and daily it closes
until the one part
touches the other
and closes forever.

Lucky me!
I have an iron bar
to wedge into the cavity
of time to keep it open
to bring light
into the endless darkness.

For a thousand lifetimes
these lines might live
or this painting
and those whose walls
touch prematurely
may find comfort in them
as they pass by

and though to God’s eye
even these thousands
are nothing but a spark
to us they are everything
a place to gather ourselves—
together and fill the nothing
between dust and dust.

dan@dangoorevitch.com

I decided to become an artist at the age of six. Dad took us down to the bank of the North Saskatchewan River and he skipped stones nearly all the way across it. He pointed out animal tracks in the sand and I tried to imitate them by writing my name with a stick on the wet bank.

I wondered if we came back next Sunday, would my name still be there? Looking down the level sand, my heart sank. As it is human nature to look up when feeling down, so I did. What I saw made my heart leap for joy. Some crazy bugger climbed 30 feet up and painted a yellow and red X on the bridge’s buttress. “That will last,” I said.

I forgot about that though, since my father died the next year and my mother became ill. My mentor, Ron Stonier, used to say that an artist was made by an idyllic childhood suddenly cut short, forcing the he child to withdraw, there to create a vision of a better world which, when he discovers his medium, he brings out into the world.

And so it was. On a perfect summer day I remember thinking “there must be more to life than perfection” and stumbled into the dark basement where my hand, magically it seemed, magnetically attracted paint to it, a piece of paper, a jar for water and, moving the muddy paint around (it was black and white) I suddenly saw an image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That, I knew, was my door to bring everything inside me out into the world.

I have been painting ever since: almost 40 years.