Description:
Hands mold the pot as the wheel turns and the potter watches the clay take shape in the morning light. Will the potter form a new pot or a new life? Perhaps the concept is one and the same. Here's to new beginnings.
................................................Sometimes I think the hands belong to God as he is shaping my life, fixing the cracks, repairing broken pieces of my heart, making good out of bad. Other times, I imagine that the hands are mine and I am molding little lives in kindergarten class. Or maybe the hands belong to my husband whose loving touch smooths my stress marks.
................................................I want to have hands that love, never hands that cause someone to shrink back as I've seen little children do with parents who raise their hands to strike them. Hands should be loving. I want to pet, squeeze, tweak, and stroke, just like hands smoothing out the bumps and bubbles of the pot.
................................................This painting is oil and acrylic. I began with a black background and then used white to outline the image of the hands and the pot. From there, I layered on the paint, building skin tones that highlighted muscles and movement. The final stage was adding the highlights. It just seems to me that pots in the molding stage should emerge in the light of a morning sun. Perhaps that isn't realistic to the potter, but it certainly appeals to the poetic writer in me.
................................................I like analogies, and I think I like being a pot. I like to think that the rough edges are smoothed away by the kindness of hands. Maybe I won't be smooth from youth, maybe I won't have the shine of new clay, but I can be smooth from the love of hands that wore away the cracks with constant care.
