Channeling the Passed

(collection of oil and collage portraits of women who are no longer living, apart from Natasha's memory and the memories of other people that admire them)

"If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks. In certain books – some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother."
Robert Henri

“We no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of giants is past!”
“We are dwarfs,” William admitted, “but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they.”
Umberto Eco “The Name of the Rose”

Who among us did not wonder whether after we die we would be able to see our loved ones again or meet great people from the past? I certainly have. But I’m impatient and I have a secret. One doesn’t need to wait to die to meet great philosophers like Plato or great artists like Van Gogh. The great people we would love to get to know are always here and ready to be discovered. All one needs to do is to read their writing, look at their art and listen to their music. Their thoughts, their dreams and their personalities are forever embedded in their work, thus providing for us a channel of communication with the ones who are physically no longer with us.

I’ve always found it amazing that my own thoughts are often echoed by the thoughts of somebody who lived five or even twenty five centuries before me. I’m amazed that the same colors that I use in my art were used by others even before my great-great-great grandmother was born. I’m amazed that I can still enjoy the same music as Claude Monet or read the same philosophers as George Sand. I’m amazed that all I have to do in order to take a glimpse at my ancestors is to look at myself in a mirror.

However, I’m saddened that so many people have forsaken the past; that they don’t realize what kind of a miracle they are missing out on and what kind of opportunities to get acquainted with history they forgo on everyday basis. Our existence in here and now is a true miracle and we wouldn’t be here and we would not have what we have now if it weren’t for the ones who came before us...