Swimming in some kind of murky, cold water, unsure of the depth and unfamiliar with the landscape. Feet searching for the bottom while eyes scan for something to make sense, clues of reassurance. The lack of light is disorienting, and the hazy air is lost for color. One breath at a time, one emotion, one memory at a time. One thing at a time. One. Only one. More than one is too heavy. One emotion tells you that this is water, and you need to start swimming. One memory is a flotation device. One at a time keeps the head above water. More than one takes on the water.
When you lose someone you love, the whole world is unrecognizable. It’s disorienting. Days and hours are confused with each other. Your own life is suddenly unfamiliar and uncomfortable. This ice cold water stings, and there is nothing to do, but swim in it. Swim or sink.
My father left this world one month ago. It was very sudden and too soon, as far as us Earth dwellers are concerned. He was 66. He knew something was wrong and did all the things you are suppose to do to save your own life. We, too, did all the things we knew to do to save his life. Yet, here we are, swimming in grief.
As it turns out, this past year of creating art was like a season of conditioning. My work led me right up to the doorstep of loss. Through my art, I had already asked some very “big picture” questions:
What is life on Earth about?
What is pain and hardship about?
What actually is fear, and where does it come from?
And, what about courage?
I allowed the questions themselves to become my inspiration for my art. And, I got my answers… simply by asking the questions. I wanted to better understand something, so I just raised my hand and asked, and then, I paid close attention. I trusted every artistic suggestion, every impulse, unsure of how my answers might arrive. And then they came, the answers flooded my heart and bones as I did the work He asked me to do; paint. He answered me, as I answered Him.
For me, painting is spiritual. As I paint, I allow music to guide my heart to specific realizations. My process of creating art has a lot to do with music. I believe that music was created in the same way my art is created; through a spiritual sense of inspiration and curiosity.
My questions led me to develop a deep and metaphorical understanding of pain in comparison to water. Pain is in the rivers we cross throughout our journey. In the fall, as I painted “Wade Through I & II” I listened to Chris Stapleton’s words, and he walked me through the muddy waters of my own pain until I reached an understanding of life on Earth and the hardships that come with it. Life is not about staying clean and tidy. It is not meant to be painless and pretty. It hurts. It stings. It is frightening at times. And, with that recognition, I layered in the concepts of fear which I had gathered in the same way earlier in the same year. Fear is like a heavy weight; something that keeps us anchored, it keeps us from moving and living. But, there is no fear where there is faith. With faith there is trust- even amongst the dark threats of loss and pain. So, I concluded that pain is inevitable, but not fear. Replace fear with faith and then…viola- there you have courage; the ability to trust and live, the ability to move forward into something purposeful. But, life is not all about doing hard, painful things. It’s not all about avoiding fear. A point comes, when it’s all been said and done, when we rinse off the mud and muck, and we find ourselves on the other side. This is a place where we get to rest our tired bones, where there is no more darkness, only color and light.
That clarity eased my heart; we are meant to do hard things, and pain isn’t forever. Ok, got it. That felt like a good conclusion to my series of painted questions. But, I had no idea my perspective would so quickly shift again, that it could rise even higher, that these answers were only the prep work. Something truly painful was just ahead, something that would lead me to draw an even more vivid conclusion about what it means to exist on Earth and thereafter.
It was Tuesday December 30th, my dad called to wish me a happy birthday. He told me he was glad I was born, and I said, “Thanks to you.”, which was a weird thing to say. So we laughed.
He said, “I love you.”
I said “I love you, Daddy. Take care of yourself.”
“I love you, too. Good night.”
I’ll never forget that group of words.
That night, he closed his eyes in the dark and woke up in The Light. Like that amazing song by the Avetts, I imagine he walked up to the Savior True shaking hands laughing… walking through the night, straight to the light…. And, as John Prine wrote, I can hear my dad thanking God for more blessings than one man can stand… I bet he went and found his mom and dad, too. But, it wouldn’t have been a vodka and ginger-ale he ordered. Although, I’m sure he found his own version of happy hour. With my own vision, and in my own words, I imagine he found the perfect tree to sit and lean up against in heaven’s woods, a place where he can observe and admire the glory land, noticing all the details in the same way he took in the artistic beauty of Earth.
This was a man who loved nature and observed details so fine. He was not an artist, but he was quick to take credit for me being one. He was creative and observant, and he taught me to notice. My brother has told me that our dad watched hawks like I do. Daniel says “Dad loved hawks.”. I didn’t even realize that, at least I don’t think I did. Sometimes those details are lost, but the notion sticks around. I noticed hawks everywhere last year. I knew I was meant to notice them, too. I knew I was suppose to gather something from these soaring watchers, the ultimate noticers, but I couldn’t fully identify what they represented. I leaned in and used these birds of prey in my art. I wrote about hawks and read about hawks. Native Americans consider hawks to be courageous warriors of truth. Hawks symbolize high perspective. I knew there was something there, something relative. And, that was true.
“You have to be honest with yourself before you can be honest with anyone else.” He shared those words with us daily. Those words have infiltrated me to the bone. It is what I represent and carry out through my work, what I hope to inspire in others. It is all about truth and trust. Trust what you perceive, what you sense, and believe that it is true. Be boldly honest with yourself.
I can’t imagine that a hawk perched up high sits there worrying about what the owl next door thinks of him or second guessing his primal instincts. The hawk is a powerhouse bird. Dude knows his skillz… he’s confident, patient and perceptive.
The truth is, sometimes my observations and my conclusions derived from animal sightings and music lyrics, it all sounds hokey. I can admit that. It might sound fake and forced. I can hear the skeptics and surface level people saying, “Oh, come on…you see what you’re looking for. You hear what you want to hear.” And that may be true for some folks, but when I’m honest with myself, I can tell the difference between truth and false. I can tell the difference between my heart and my head. When God speaks to me, it comes through my heart. It is subtle and easy to miss, but it is truth, undeniably. That voice has proven its power. It is real, and it is worth trusting.
After weeks of paddling around in the water of grief, I was struggling to get back to my studio…until I remembered some advice my dad gave me this past fall. He taught me to compartmentalize; to organize pain into categories in order to make it manageable and eventually useful. This advice taught me to concentrate on one thing at a time to keep from getting overwhelmed, as I easily do. Placing one foot in front of the other walked me back into my studio. Mixing one color at a time created a scheme. Working with one idea at a time, I created one painting at a time. Just one kept me moving forward. Just one kept me from taking on water. It kept me swimming versus sinking. Until, suddenly, paint was pouring out onto canvases all over the studio. I’ve been constructing little narratives and dialogs on canvas in every corner of the room. Some are with God, some with my dad, some are framed versions of his new perspective, some of my new perspective. Inspiration is coming though me like bottleneck traffic in Atlanta. This big, broad picture has come in tight and close. I’m sensing things I’ve never sensed before. I can’t fit it all in a days work or within the space of my studio. Suddenly, there is so much to make out of this, so many colors to paint.
I’ve learned it’s pretty common after a loss, to pray for a visit, like a sign or a dream, some kind of recognition and reassurance that your person is in God’s hands. Some people plead for a sense of comfort that all is well, and they receive it in all different shapes and forms. And, these people who’ve had the dream or the sign, they trust that it is a visit from their lost person. It’s that heart and head thing, the truth versus the false can be clear as day when you yourself experience it. But, when you hear it without relating, it can sound unreal. I was unsure of how to use this material, how to share this or whether is was necessary to share at all. But, it was too colorful not to share. It was too bright to just sit on a shelf. So I’m passing the light.
“Well, Darlin' (“Goo”) I'm just tryin' to tell ya...That there's always been a rainbow hangin' over your head.
If you could see what I see, you'd be blinded by the colors,
Yellow, red, and orange, and green, and at least a million others.
So tie up the bow, take off your coat, and take a look around... everything is alright now.”
(Kasey Musgraves)
My dad didn’t call me “Darlin”. He called me “Goo”. (I think that came from “Silly Goose”, but it’s been “Goo” for so long I can’t actually remember.) The song said “Darlin”, but in my heart, I heard “Goo”. Allow me to preface what I’m about to say with this: my dad had nothing in common with Kasey Musgraves… or rainbows for that matter, but that didn’t seem to stop me from hearing his voice in a song called “Rainbow”. He reached out to me through her words as I painted- the same way God reaches me almost every day, and that makes perfect sense, at least to me.
I believe God funnels himself through people doing His work, the work He calls on us to do. He comes to us when we are putting trust in His design. He puts himself in the words and sounds of a musician, through the colors and strokes of an artist, through the people who glorify His gifts and His creation. These are the light passers. That’s why those of us who are noticers are also charged with being passers. We don’t get these inspirations for our own good and stop there. It is meant to be shared for the good of someone else. Even if it is only one someone else. When the light gets passed, it’s a beautiful thing. Light becomes inspiration. But, what happens when light passes through water, through someone’s pain? Light through water becomes color; a spectrum we refer to as a rainbow. Not a sparkly, shiny rainbow, but a spectrum of honest and true color. A spectrum of hope.
That word, rainbow, it had shown up everywhere since my dad died, but I hadn’t been able to understand how this rainbow theme applied to my dad?… It wasn’t adding up. I mean, the man had a heart of gold, but rainbows were not his thing. So, in an effort to understand it, I began to work that spectrum of colors into my art; ROYGBIV’s snuck into each composition. Then, I heard the song “Rainbow” like I was hearing it for the first time ever. And, I cried. No, I sobbed. Because I understood fully what he wanted me to know. And, in that moment I felt his hand pat my back, putting me at ease. “Everything is alright now.”
From where he sits now, leaned up against that big ole tree in heaven’s woods, he sees rainbows all the time- they never fade. He sees God’s color & light, including where and who it reaches. He wanted me to know that this color I’ve been devoted to for the majority of my life, it is not random or disconnected, it comes from far and beyond. All these weeks I’ve been stuck under the cloud of loss, like swimming in a cold creek in the middle of a rainstorm, yet all the while- color was brewing above me. The light was preparing to shine through these waters to reveal color like I’d never known before. My dad wanted to make sure I was noticing. He didn’t want me to miss a single detail.
At the memorial service, we honored the life of Dan Haas with the song “Where Rainbows Never Die”. Despite the title, we felt his character in the lyrics. The rainbow never represented him. It represents where he is and what he sees. He sits up high like a hawk observing, taking it all in, every detail and every color, from a place where there is no darkness, only color and light. He rests now with the rainbows.
Suddenly, the spectrum of color is so close to me. It’s so strong. It is more purposeful and powerful than it was before the water came. And, I trust that nothing about life is random. And, everything is connected. And, it does not always feel “alright”. But, it always will be all right.
Be beautifully bold and bright in your ways.
Trust in your heart, and value your days.
Be all that you are and nothing you’re not.
Be color.
Be light.
Be a bright spot.
Musical inspirations available for download on Spotify; See Sarah Otts playlist titled “Honestly”.