Tygerlight started during a residency with Lucid Art Foundation in Point Reyes 2018, using Pacific Ocean water to create the first version called ‘Lisbon.’ It was revisited back in New Jersey influenced by a Nabakov story about an aquamarine bowl. Then turmeric was applied in joyful anticipation of the Haldi ceremony of my upcoming wedding. Haldi is the protection and purification ritual that precedes the main event in Pakistani / Indian weddings. Finally I painted Mt. Heaven on a silk upon the central orb, a mountain I drew in Montana on the Road to the Sun in 2021. The mountain is where heaven and earth exist together for a moment in the right light. Also influential was a Daoist full moon meditation, involving the perfecting of light.
There is life in the dying, joy in each mourning for joy,
in the labyrinth of leaving we visit the Goddess
One day we awaken, moved to sing
nearer to the sky, inside the inside sky
crying enlit, our cumbersome ideas
of enlightenment have disappeared
without trace, there’s some dance
in our whisper whirling in tighter dimensions spiraled together
shapes of our burning presences
raven shadows across the dead branches
disappearing darkness and the bear of
fire opal in lowland golden hour
cooling to indigo, the mind when
reflecting the heart’s first light,
feeling the tube of existence
darkly rolled around you and then
through the opening, just up there
( the tyger ) ( the light perfected )
From Tygerlight 2022
