the fractured woman

I painted this one a few weeks ago but have been slow to update the blog due to the end of the school semester and Christmas rapidly approaching.  I don't have very much to say about this painting except to say that the woman in the painting was an odd and yet very fantastic mistake.  I had no intention of her being there but when I stepped back to look at the finished product, there she was.  

The problem that I have (or had) with this painting is that the paint is cracking on it.  I experimented with a new type of canvas for this one and this is the result I received? In all honesty though, it's an oil canvas (meant to be used with oil paints) so I should have figured that gouache might have some sort of alternate reaction--I dismissed this possibility, however, and continued to use the gouache.  I'm not a huge fan of oil paints anyway-- too expensive and they take forever to dry! 

All this to say, the paint has already cracked in many areas, but the longer I look and take that in, the more I actually prefer it that way.  The woman has a very frail and and yet beautiful persona about her.  I think perhaps that she, in more ways than one, represents the fragility and tenderness that is present in God's craftsmanship of every woman.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we are frail.  We are easily broken and cracked, and yet there is such beauty that shines in the midst of that....for, as in the painting, she is still standing and still lovely as ever. 

I hope this can encourage you (and not only the ladies!) to stand firm when you feel broken and cracked.  

There is still beauty to be found.  

After all, it is the cracks that allow light to shine through.

"Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open.  Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel.  And then things happen- these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another.  And the vessel starts to crack in places.  And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable.  Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled.  But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart.  And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs.  When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours.  Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside.  But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in.  The light can get out."

[-John Green]