Many things of the past
Are brought to my mind,
As I stand in the garden
Staring at a cherry tree.
~ Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
While in spending the summer in Savoie, France, each night I look out my window into the sky, past a cherry tree. Sometime during the night, in some state of not-quite-wakefulness, I tried to memorize the view. Often, the stars strike me as so beautiful I’m afraid I’ll forget the moment. I’ve started keeping a pencil and tiny square of paper nearby so I can record their position in the dark.
Like every other human, I enjoy watching the night sky; wondering, divining, imagining, experiencing awe, peace, and a sense of timelessness that compresses my existence to a speck of dust. I’m not sure how that soothes me, but it does. Since arriving in France, I’ve been experiencing a fractured sense of reality due to the sublime beauty, which is particularly unmooring at night. Another mystery is that I find that soothing, too. Not wanting to let these pleasurable feelings go, I’ve been recording the night sky out my window in a series of tiny paintings.
The repetition of a nightly theme mimics circadian and seasonal rhythms. Nature’s innumerable variations provide changes to delight and interest - a morse code I’m forever trying to crack.
This is a series of 19 small paintings, each approximately 5.7 cm wide x 6.3 cm high.