Re-Leasing Joy

Original 24x30" Acrylic

Katherine Skaggs ©2004

Discover Joy dear one and move beyond the betrayal you have experienced for too long.

I created this painting out of the chaos of anger and hurt feelings I experienced when some changes came into my life that were not welcomed. As I worked the blacks and reds in the paint, with the emerging whites and blues, this figure came through the disorganized colors on the canvas. This being is familiar to me, though it is expressing more androgonously than before. I have drawn it before in pen and ink, more male, yet oh so familiar.

This being has been betrayed too many times. Metaphorically, and perhaps representing another time, this native american being has know betrayal all too well. White man has promised many things in these Americas, only to disappoint and destroy the native peoples with lies and half truths. The native peoples of the Americas were almost wiped out by the invading Europeans. Spirits were broken, lives and cultures taken away and replaced by settlements of outsiders.

This painting appeared to me at a time when I had to get in touch with my ability to identify and release the experience of betrayal in my own life. Whether it be by another, or perhaps betraying my own self, I had to learn to forgive and move on, so out of the chaos I might again meet Joy (the hummingbird). I curiously discover joy again and ask what the dance might be that I might keep it in my life.

The hummingbird tells me I am to always, curiously invite it into my heart. To do so, I must refocus my attention, not on the anger, but on the creation of life.

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