Resting Man

Sitting in an empty gallery. The work on the wall looks ‘nice’. I can’t think of another word for it, I’m all out of superlatives for artwork. The opening had drained me of them and any energy I had for this place. My work, hung in a narrow entrance corridor, large paintings in gold frames, too big to be noticed in the cramped conditions. The irony of it. But it didn’t matter because no one was coming in, so no one was going to see them anyways. I thought of the zen proverb, does a tree falling in a forest make any sound when there is no one around? My art was falling in my eyes all around me.

The work that went into each painting, even the damn framing, the sweat and the tears were all going unoticed. I was not thinking in terms of fairness and unfairness, those terms did not come into my mind. In fact I was strangely calm. A sensation of falling washed over me as I sat there in the silence of the room, looking out the small window unto the street below. Watching tourists make their way to the Cathedral.

Families with young children, bronzed teenagers with bright knapsacks in laughing groups making their way up the small hill to the historical building. What will they find there? I thought to myself. Just another Cathedral, another historical monument, with a nod to the past, they will come back down and carry on with their lives, their own personal journeys. Some happy, some sad, but none futile. None futile. I sit here amongst ignored artworks and think that nothing is futile. The act of sitting here in silence, watching, is an act of prayer.

I am now interceding for them and for me. What makes real art? I ask myself this question and the answer comes. Art is no different than any aspect of life. All life is art and all art is life, what makes real art is the same thing that makes a real anything, being truly present. Just be, your answers will come, all of them, in their own time and in their own ways, just be for now.

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