I had a random thought (after the feeling of being blank and disconnected to my mandala making). The thought was, 'making a mandala is like going down a mine searching for diamonds and only coming up with coal'. After thinking this I began to remember my grandfather, who died many many years ago and who I hardly knew. He was a Lancashire coal miner. He lived in a small terraced house with an outside toilet and no bath. He came home black faced and a tin bath would be taken off the wall for him to bathe. The blue of his eyes shining out through the dirt is seared into my heart..
I did this mandala in deep connection to him. I was thinking of the helmet lamp, the wooden beams and the journey down the shaft, and his blue, blue eyes. I don't have a photo of him. so I have been looking at photos of miners to help me make a painting of my memory of him. I haven't done that yet, but I did a painting of the devastated landscape left behind after the end of the coal mining industry.
Your story reminds me of my grandfathers story. I never met him. My mother never even met him. He worked in a mine too here in the south of The Netherlands and died there. You made a beautiful painting. I mean it tells the story. Beautiful, dark and a bit sinister.
ReplyDelete