24th Entry, September 20th 2008, Angelic Series part 4

" . . . . with eyes closed I could understand something

that perhaps it is not me but the things that need me that provides me with the power to move and go,

and I understood then that, basically, if it (anything really) was to be it was up to me and that I needed to not do it alone but to draw all of the strength of all of those connections

and become an adult

and simply knowing that was enough, so after some silly fit and medium term discomfort quietly I went and now I am here and it is really quite beautiful where I am today, this moment and right now.

I thank the best and beyond of me for that each day, I am grateful but know myself well enough now and after all of this "growing up" to state that I am still not done yet. There's always plenty to do, but even more than that I find myself interested and actually quite passionate about people's lives.

Lets just say I'm alive, smart, with a healthy curiosity - I have my druthers about me young man, now pour me a whisky, light me a smoke, and let me take a nap. I'm gettin old." - Rosie in summation by pgp christmas 199x

"Sariel" by Patrick Gorman Pettis

the Angel of Emotional Healing

14 inches long by 11 inches wide

on pine framed cotton
in natural inks stains and dyes

asking price is $540USD to be featured 03/06/09 at the Romaine Robbins art Gallery
currently availible for purchase

To master the colours in this specific piece I had to do some pretty clever improvisation.

When a natural element is used, especially if it isn't being "fed" and attached to it's living branch root or vine it has a tendancy to decompase literally - the real crook of color in such a preservation process is oxygen, time and basic rot. It takes a little bit of alchemy and apothicary to compromise with nature and keep it as is lol. With this piece I learned a few new things.

My process is a sensative process. To capture and hold such a thing as light and refraction as is, really its a language and compromise or one might even call it a "dance".

Nature has it down to a pattend, jade - amber - fossilization etc - but I have only moments not decades before the colour is lost and hours and small hand strung strokes on a canvas, well it all can easilly turn to brown, grey, rust or even black. Take an apple and cut it in half then leave it sitting for five minutes, its pretty much the same thing. This piece has granny smith, wild grape, tomato and thorney branch thistle in it lol. Can you imagine . . .

Ugh - easilly it was a moody thing until finally I paitently let it paint itself.

Sariel - the Angel of Emotional Healing.

Within each of us there is a grasp of something both unique and powerful. Each and every soul has a pourpose, at least that's my simple belief, we all have a reason for being here.

Coinscisively, and this is my theory, as a simple collective we are not designed to be solitary but collaborative. Sayings like "team effort" or "gang" or "clan" and even "nationality" bears us to something familiar - however proximity forces us to not only deal with eachother and those psycho emotional terms but ourselves and define our own worlds. I believe it is healthy to interact with the both - and by that I mean the world around me and the world within me. I believe in looking at something close up and listening, then learning and doing.

Life is precious and undefined to date and sometimes we treat it all so poorly. What I try to do and sometimes fail is simply maintain a second look at the state of the world within me and around me, the rest is honey. Hell, if a fingel nail bee can do it - we people can a million times over.

Ok anyway enough of my tangent (for now).

If a person just looks at the piece they'd see a figure reaching outward on what appears to be a flat line - its a deliberate image and so in talc and corn starch it's white. The line though level is not flat it is fractured and within it there are 14 faces. A human body slipping through a single layer of fabric, its a symbol or "impression".

When a force of creation such a Sariel is called it's a silent thing, a gush or squease, an out reached arm but not a hug, a cupping of the wounded soul in arm and hand. It is a silent and mysterious compassion toward the suffering which keeps them from falling too short.

I used a pink Boulenvilia to create the fuscia red hues outlighning the wings shown in the photographs here as an homage to a friend but when it interacted with the acid of my garden grown tomatoes it created spots - so I went with it lol. After I received a plant titled "The Patrick Mint" I finished the piece.

Many of my fans ask me how I get a metallic muster on my pieces I have to tell ya - I do not know it just happens sometimes. I sometime use a home made mother of pearl paste mixed with salt and vinegar then a joint compound made from lye and god knows whatever to produce texture or what I call "sparks" (little shards of light refracting into the eye) but really I don't know. It just happens sometimes.

What I really love about his specific piece is that it was made for someone who actually needs it.

Ok anyway - here's something that I do. I walk outside and look up then close my eyes for 5 seconds and take a deep breath and make a wish. I don't open my eyes until I've made my wish. Then I look and for some reason the world seems brighter around me and somehow my wishes come true. It doesnt matter if it's raining, or bright or dark out, up is up and me is me.

It's so corney but believe me it's quite powerful.

more later