Never a Still Life

Painting flowers can be frustrating sometimes.  One night I started a project on very fresh flowers and the next day they were all facing downward. We often hear the phrase 'still life' to refer to certain works of art.  Still life, according to my uneducated interpretation, has one characteristic - staged and unchanging.  The image is maintained.   

Still life is meant to be still.  However, in the case of making art using things that are organic (living matter) there is no such thing as still life.  My art is currently focused on botanical subjects, in other words- perishables.  Assuming that lighting is a controlled factor, my reference fruits and flowers are never still. They change, the flowers droop and loose petals, the fruits get spots and they shrivel a little more everyday, the leaves dry out and curl, seedpods crack open and burst, etc.  Not that these are all negative occurrences - no in fact they display very interesting, uncommon and sometimes even more beautiful form. All these observations happen on my drawing/painting table on a daily basis.  Therefore, it is fair to say then that there is no such thing as still life. Still life is an anachronism.  Life can't be still.  Only lifeless things can be still.   This is not a new revelation or discovery because it has always been that way.   Rather it is a matter subversion.  :)

Well then, let me take this opportunity to digress.  Life is never still.  Life is timed.  Time dictates the movement of life and man cannot do anything about that.  King Solomon in his God-given wisdom understood this dance between life and time when he wrote the third chapter of Ecclesiastes.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away, 

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.  

~~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

"He has made everything beautiful in its time." (v. 11)  But we, in our natural mind, desire to preserve specific moments of this life.  When we're having fun, when we're experiencing glory, when we have a lot of money, when the people around us are accepting, when we're healthy, when they are healthy, when we're skinny or when our skin is tight and elastic :) we want to freeze it.  We strive to keep it that way - like a still life where the only change is the accumulation of dust.  But alas, we do not control life.  Life is timed.  There is a time for everything and therefore laughter cannot take the time allotted for weeping.  God obviously designed life so that we get the total package of experience.  It is a test we all have to take.  What then can we do?  "There is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot..." (v. 22)  We are left to deal with our attitude towards everything under the sun.   

Going back to art now, 'still life' can still be achieved by faking the effect of time on a perishable subject.  A quick snap shot preserves the image.  In life, we can file those memories that we like to keep. And even though we cannot linger on one enjoyable segment, the memory of it might remind us that time keeps a tight schedule and that the next segment might be different but equally beautiful.

Life is never still.  Life is timed.   

The Photograph

I was going through old pictures in search of the ones I took of my niece Hazel on her first visit to  El Dorado Hills when a sealed photo envelop caught my attention.  The envelop looked as if it has not been opened ever.  It made me very curious and so I took a break from looking for Hazel's pictures and decided to investigate this mysterious envelop.  It turned out that it is the one that contained all the pictures taken during my mother's funeral.  I remember I had the film developed and printed at Costco right after coming back from the Philippines in May of 1998; but who took those pictures is now beyond my recollection. It must  have been my cousin Eddie because I appear in those pictures.  And yes, that envelop was sealed on purpose.  I did not really liked looking at the photographs - it was too painful.  At that time as if a time would never come when I would look at them again.  

That time came.  However, seeing the photographs again brought me back to that time with a different view.  There remains an empty space in my heart but no longer do I grieve.  Experiences with my mother were no longer renewed but memory of the short time we've shared is very much alive even after 20 years.   The thought of her still make me feel like a child being loved  by her but now I've also come to experience the life of a mother - which is among the happiest part of my life to this day.  In other words, I am no longer the same person.  Although the photographs remained the same, I have changed.

One picture in particular struck me.  It is a picture of my mother. She looks so beautiful.  Pearl earrings gave a sparkle on her face as if she's ready for something special.  A white veil that covered part of her face made her look like a bride.  A bride ready to meet the one she loves.  It makes me sad that her eyes are closed. And yet something inside me feels glad that she no longer is focused on this world.  In that picture, her eyes are already fully dedicated to the sight of her Lord. In fact all her senses, all of her is now with her God.  Oh my Lord God,  I hope you found her in her best when she came home to you.

The Elusive Wedding Gown
(A quick sketch)

During her living years, she never had the opportunity to wear a wedding gown.  At eighteen, she was pregnant with me.  And the usual prenuptial talk between parents of the future bride and the future groom were undertaken, but in the process, her father in his best judgement knew that it would be better for his daughter to remain unmarried in spite of the scandalous situation she was in.  He was convinced that it would be less painful to bear the shame than for his daughter to be stuck with the Laquindanum family.  To make the story short, he did not approve of the marriage.  I was born out of wedlock, my grandfather and grandmother would raise me and protect me from being seen or seeing him for as long as they have lived.  At age thirty, my mother got married to Rodolfo, my step-father who I never learned how to address, but the wedding was  a simple one that she did not wear a traditional wedding gown.

Once we die it's game over.  Whatever is done after that no longer have any effect on our eternal destination or position.  Hence the last outfit my mother wore had no consequence on her final journey.  But to me, who is yet to make choices and decisions on this side of my life, seeing her photograph impacts the way I see life.  Once my mother brought shame to her parents but in the end she was the one child who made the right choice to live a godly life.  Memories of that life nudges me to look at my own and see how I am preparing myself to meet my Lord.

~~~~~~~