To You, Barbara Scheidler Bartholomew

I am looking at this picture and all I see is one of the most beautiful women I have ever known.  Her loving presence still rests deep inside me.

 

  It is the season of Samhain.  Time to reflect on those who have passed over. Time to reflect on our lives, what we have lost.  Give them all time to grieve.

     I was talking through the inter webs to a special group of people.  We were talking of ancestors, how there are those of blood and those of affinity.

     I remembered a painting teacher I had quite some time ago.  She passed away when I was living on a small island in the Salish Sea.  I sat at the public computers in the library, read her obituary and cried.

     She was an inspiration, a warm soft blanket that you could cuddle up to for love in a realm that was often constricted, confined and cold.  As we would paint, she would whisk around, her long black skirt flying behind her, wisps of grey hair moving away from her face, and she would say the most beautiful, inspiring, supportive things that an artist could ever hear.  All that was needed in her world was letting go. In her art realm there did not exist the scientific conceptualized realm of what someone smart with a degree can just create anything out of fanciful words.  Her art, her teaching, her being came from a connection deep within her core.  It was all human all the time.

     The words she spoke were so beautiful that I would try to write down everything that she would say.  I still have it to this day. In a notebook some where.

     She was the first person that really made me think that wearing all black was my style, and I dressed in all black for several years. Thinking about her now,makes me want to wear an all black outfit all over again.

     She thought my tired raccoon eyes made me look very parisien.  She showed us pictures of her studio. A small little attic where she would sit hunched over painting small little paintings on the floor.  She showed us small pieces where gold, black, and white paint moved over the paper creating lines, textures, spaces, voids and matter.

' In Huang Shan, China's Yellow Mountains, I saw no one.  The stars were close and the stone steps skirting shear drops demanded full attention.  For on hundred thousand years and at this moment, in the highest and most remote regions, clusters of souls, hermits and immortals live in quiet mystery, in the light of the moon, in alchemy, prayer, wood gathering meditation and...with the forces of nature travel nowhere and everywhere with names unknown, breath the breath of one thousand miles, and share the light.

Appearing magically, huge drawings carved into shear and inaccessible stone faces are undeciphered poetry.

I am grateful to all souls near and far who live in remote and light fill regions among disappearing clouds on the highest most inaccessible peaks, alone and together; and as molecules encircle the globe, for lighting breathing the breath of one thousand miles.'

     With her presence wafting by, her lips parting to express only love of creation, she helped undo years of feeling boxed in, painting within the lines.  She helped me feel free.  Even though I was still a critic, I was a much more honest, raw, loving, scared, crying and passionate critic.  I escaped the realm of over-conceputalization and danced in a realm where anything was possible and everything was ok.

     Thank you Barbara Bartholomew.  The next time I paint, it's been some time, and oh I will paint again! you mark my word, I'll be listening for you, sending me a little whisper to my ear. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

"It is this universal energy in the world that I attempt to convey in my work.  I am not confined by the traditional arrangement of forms customary in Western painting.  Hierarchy is absent. I attempt, rather, to bring the viewer back to the present moment, back to direct experience.  I believe that paintings should be experienced as one listens to music or to the sound of the wind. The painting is silent.  My work demands a slower pace, as the viewer enters in the experience of emptiness, space, time and the undefined"

To see some of Barbara's works you may click on this link

http://sheidlerbartholomew.com/about.html