I recently did this painting, Ocean Butterfly, as part of a mural contest here in Vero Beach. The town is seeking to update and beautify, and chose the butterfly motif to represent the town’s transformation. We all know the magical innate power belonging to butterflies and dragonflies to transform from earthbound caterpillars and waterborne nymphs into winged works of art. These two creatures are undoubtedly the most significant messengers for us humans regarding our own capacity for metamorphosis. The spinning of our cocoons is our ability to weave our attention inward, and drink from the deep well of our imagination from which we can create ourselves anew as beautiful, living works of art. We must never underestimate the power of art as a tool for transformation whether it be for ourselves or the world around us.
Our knowledge of history and of all those who walked the earth before us is deeply embedded within art and images. While mythic legends grant us written clues and spoken stories about ancient civilizations, it is the abundance of images left behind by our ancestors upon which we rely for the finer details of their mythic imaginings. Our planet is strewn with intricate shards, petroglyph drawings, carved temples and painted walls that define our shared human language born from the realm of images. Our ancestors sought to understand the world in which they lived through their expression of images, and whose trail they left behind for us to follow. Images offer us an unspoken language for which no words are needed: a language we can all understand through our sentient life experiences. Art then becomes a tool for transformation by way of connecting us to the vibratory essence of universal laws and truths. Despite the diversity of cultures separated by thousands of miles and vast oceans, similar ancient images and symbols have been found all over the world. Art is thus a dialect we can all speak, and use our shared translations to imagine and create positive change.
Whatever we can imagine, we can create. Many of the problems we face in the world today reflect our creative capacity devoid of our full imaginative potential. On a recent trip to Cuba, I visited the home of artist Jose Fuster in a suburb of Havana. It happened to be my birthday so I was ecstatic to be immersed in Fuster’s imaginative mind manifesting in such color and wonder. The artist transformed his home into a magnificent work of art, and inspired his neighbors to do the same.
We humans are not planted here on the Earth to survive our wayward path of co-destruction, but to thrive under our divine design for co-creation. It is our journey inward, into the cocoon, to align with the mysteries of creation that are constantly being mirrored back to us within the beauty and wonder of nature. Nature is our inspiration to feel our harmonic resonance with these laws of creation, and by which to creatively express this harmony as living art. The key to our very human existence is in our harmonic alignment to the living natural world. If we can tap into the flow of creation, then life will become art; and art will become life as we use the gift of our imagination to transform the depravity we see around us. Art as a tool for transformation lies within our co-creative capacity to become beings of love and freedom, and to soar like butterflies.
