Translation: Stop, look & listen.

Photograph by Russell James. Collaborative art by Lance Chadd (AUS).

4’11” x 6’4” archival pigment ink printed on rag cotton with acrylic and ochre applications.

If we say we’ve ‘discovered’ something then we take the credit for it, we name it after ourself, we claim it, but if we have the attitude that whatever we come across has been ‘revealed’ to us, it was there all the time, then we don’t take the credit. We are grateful, thankful and give appreciation to whoever put these things in place. ( the creator, spirit or god ) I believe we have a need to be grateful, somewhere in our soul which asks the question, to who? I find things are ‘revealed’ to me when I’m looking or searching. I’m in that humility, in that learning mode and so then ‘more’ truths are revealed, because of that humility. The ‘I’ in the claim of discovery, the pride, is the opposite to humility. ‘Even our old people – I remember hearing my Dad and them saying, old ‘Marbarn’ men or doctor in our culture. He heals people spiritually. If they misuse that gift that they got, then that would be taken away from them. If they get proud or arrogant, it’ll leave them like their shadow and walk away from them, dad used to say.’

These circles in this painting represent the three stages of her life again. It starts with the young girl, then woman, then elder or grandmother. It’s herself, her life, her heart, her soul, her spirit. The light’s, are the truths revealed to her. Its not just something in her head, it will go to her heart and truth is food for the soul. It’s what nurtures it, what edifies it.