So, I’ve been wanting to talk about this thing I've been fiddling with – trying to make what I guess you’d call pantheistic art. It’s been a bit of a journey, not gonna lie.
It all started a while back. I was just feeling this really strong connection to, well, everything. You know, when you're out in nature, or even just looking at the sky, and you get this sense that it’s all part of something bigger, something divine. I didn’t really have a word for it then. I just felt it.
My First Attempts – And Boy, Were They Rough
Then I stumbled across the word 'pantheism'. I remember looking it up. It came from Greek roots, pan meaning 'all' and theos meaning 'God'. The idea is basically that God and the universe are the same thing, not separate. 'God is all, and all is God.' That just clicked for me. It felt right.
So, I thought, I’m gonna try and paint that feeling. Not just a pretty picture of a tree, but that deep-down feeling of interconnectedness, of divinity in everything.
I got out my old paints, stretched a canvas. I was all fired up. I started trying to paint a forest scene, thinking I could make the trees look like they were dissolving into the light, or that the earth itself was breathing. Sounds cool, right? Well, it didn’t quite work out.
- My trees just looked like, well, slightly blurry trees.
- When I tried to get really abstract, it just looked like a mess. My kid even asked if I'd spilled my coffee on the canvas. Ouch.
I spent weeks on this. Moved from the forest idea to trying to capture it in a sunset, then even in just patterns of light and shadow. My tiny apartment started to permanently smell of oil paints. I was getting pretty down about it. I just couldn't get what was in my head onto the canvas. It felt like I was missing something crucial.
The "Aha!" Moment – In the Last Place I Expected
Then, one afternoon, I was tidying up – a rare event, I admit. I was looking at my kid's room. Toys everywhere, clothes in a pile, sunlight streaming through the window hitting a dusty old teddy bear. And just like that, bam! I felt it. That same sense of everything being connected, of a quiet, everyday divinity right there in the middle of the chaos.
It wasn’t some grand, epic nature scene. It was just… life. Messy, imperfect, but still shot through with something special.
It made me think. Maybe I was going about this art thing all wrong. I was trying so hard to create this pantheistic feeling, to force it into these grand subjects. But maybe it's not about painting something that screams 'God is in this majestic mountain!' Maybe it’s about finding that feeling in the ordinary, the mundane. Seeing the 'all is God' in a dust mote dancing in a sunbeam, or the way weeds push through concrete.
It reminded me of this time, years ago, my car broke down. Middle of nowhere, phone dead, the whole disaster. I was furious at first. Just stuck. But after a while, I calmed down and just… looked. Really looked. At the cracks in the old asphalt road, the way the wind moved the dry grass by the roadside, even a rusty old can someone had tossed. And there was this weird sense of peace, of connection to it all. It wasn't beautiful in the classic sense, but it was real, and it felt significant.
So, that’s where I’m at with this pantheistic art thing. I'm trying to let go of making grand statements and instead just be open to seeing that divine spark in the everyday stuff. It’s less about a specific technique or subject, and more about a way of looking, a way of feeling. Still a work in progress, always is, right? But it feels more honest now. I just paint what moves me, hoping that feeling comes through. Sometimes it’s a landscape, sometimes it’s just my messy kitchen counter. It’s all part of the same big, weird, wonderful thing.
