‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky
8x10 oil
Something about this painting gets to me. I like it. I think of it as a depiction of my own serpentine life path of bright times and muted times — discovering, learning, growing, changing, becoming more grateful and generous and peaceful along the way — all of it leading me up to where the road meets the sky … and once there, I imagine myself gazing out over the vast new beyond and can do nothing but spread my arms like wings and whisper, “Whoever, Whatever, However You are … thank you so much for my life … thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I often actually say these words. Out loud. Every night, in fact. Just after I turn off the light.
One memorable stop along my journey came to me as I was laying down the final brush marks in this painting. Eons ago (or was it just yesterday) I saw Jimi Hendrix play at the Hollywood Bowl. Never, ever had I seen someone play a guitar like he did. He controlled feedback like a master calligrapher, sometimes even playing long riffs one handed. Holy moly! I could not sit still! I felt like a ten year old again. Giddy, excited, thrilled! I grinned like a donkey at the spectacle of raw wild talent not fifty feet away. Although I was then in a band myself, I’d never been so overwhelmed, so profoundly captured and taken in by what I was experiencing. I was not witnessing a guy playing a guitar. I was witnessing art … art at its wildest. There are really no words that I can use to describe that feeling of being in that historic moment. Jimi was only 27 years old when he died. I don’t know what killed him, but I like to think that he’d reached the top of his own road and could not wait to move on to the next realm of artistic discovery awaiting him over that ethereal horizon. In fact, I can so easily see him up there, smiling back at me and saying, “Scuse me while I kiss the sky.”
We all have Jimi’s kind of wild beautiful amazing mind-blowing art within us. Our potential is endless. All we have to do is tap into it, with deep, profound passion.
Why do I believe this? Because we are alive.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
