Perseverance – The Law of Nature

“Never give up. Never, never give up!
We shall go on to the end.”
Winston Churchill

Perseverence
Acrylic on Canvas
18 x 24
Varnished Finish

Perseverence – steady persistence in adhering to a belief, resilience, and patience is what we see in nature.

“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins- not through strength but by perseverence.”
H. Jackson Brown

This painting happened in my mind when I was gazing at Free Within – with its deep earth and the sky above. I could see a tree there – wanting to come out of the crevices. The tree in my thought was high, mighty, big and bold. Its strong branches stood tall against the deep forest greens. Its roots were strong within.

So, I set out to finish it – as I saw it. Thick modelling paste gave me the freedom to deepen the roots on canvas. Knife slided deep into earth in gay abandon. It always feels good when ones visions get translated on canvas – even if they are not true representation.

But midst the root formation, the joy stopped. Something did not feel right.  The tree refused to be born on the canvas. Chopped and uprooted trees is what I saw. That is the reality we live in. At that moment, all I could see was a tree stump. The stump remained on the canvas. Dead. Silent.

“Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky.
We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness”
Kahlil Gibran

I let the paste to dry. Nothing felt right. In vain, I looked up to the tree for answers.  I could never give up on it or abandon it.

The mighty tree did not give up either. Its destiny was not to remain to rot. It refused to die.

It gave birth to new saplings from within. What I thought of painting as dead was living within. The little plants made themselves out of the earth’s crevices.

My earlier painting, Free Within, now seems complete.

“He who has hope has everything”
Arabian Proverb