The Sun Comes Out Again
Day #29 of Hilma af Klint and the Imaginary Possible
When I started painting the Vortex of the Rose, I thought, well, this isn’t gonna be as beautiful as the one before it, but that’s okay because beauty is not the primary thing I’m going for. If a painting ends up being beautiful, great, but I’m more interested in following my hand and seeing what it is that wants to be painted through me.
The permission to not paint something beautiful, to let whatever it is come forth, even something incomplete, silly, awkward, ugly, incompetent — all the things I try to avoid or correct in myself — allowed the painting to be beautiful in it’s own way, in a different way, than the painting before it.
The second appearance of beauty surprised me. It was a beauty I didn’t see and couldn’t see in the moment, but only later on.
I think this happens when we look back at ourselves at an earlier age: We remember how awkward and unhappy we were, all the things we didn’t know, the mistakes we wouldn’t make now ( or so we think).
But, looking back on our earlier selves, we also see what we could not see then: the beauty and bravery and grace of that person that we were in the midst of all that awkwardness and discomfort.
What changed was not so much my exterior self, though that younger me is practically unrecognizable from the me I am at present. The real change between then and now, is my willingness to see and allow for beauty within what was and what is.
This willingness to see beauty has been a long time coming.
This painting, The Sun Comes Out Again, reminds me of a moment, after a long period of grey, when the sun comes out from behind a cloud, bright and vibrant and alive — a reminder of all the sunny days you’ve known and all the sunny days yet to come, a brilliant reminder of the light that is always there, illuminating our lives whether or not we can see it.
Even on the darkest of days, something within us still grows.
