Doorways and Portals

There are times when we sense we're on a threshold. Our life as we've known it is stale, or complete, or broken. Something has finished but we can't yet see what our fresh focus might be. We're at a doorway. 

Sometimes this is a literal doorway as we leave where we've lived or worked. Sometimes it's an emotional doorway as we say goodbye to our worn out habits and realize what's always worked for us, no longer does. And sometimes it's a symbolic doorway offering unknown opportunity if we're brave enough to enter. 

The Forgotten Door is my most recent doorway painting. I'm unfathomably fascinated with ancient stone structures. They hint at wisdom and knowledge now faded from human memory and enshrouded in mystery. While weighty stone structures are unlikely to reborn in our 21st century world, I feel they are holding something for us until we're awake enough to reclaim and re-invent it for contemporary re-use.

As we stumble into our increasingly complex and and technological future, our ancient past may seem like an odd source of inspiration. But I came across the phrase 'our ancient future' recently. The Forgotten Door is ajar and is beckoning us there. 

 

 

Years ago, I had to vacate my rented place each summer while the owners returned to holiday there, so I sought out interesting options in which to camp for a few weeks. One was an old two bale cowshed that, after a good scrub out, became less than a cabin but more than a tent. It still had the original old push-out wooden doors that used to release the cow from the bale after she'd been milked. 

The Cowshed Door painting was born of that experience, and was during my early painting days when I was experimenting with oil pastels and watercolour. 

What intrigued me about this doorway, was that it opened onto a grassy slope that led to a landscape laced with crumbling old stone walls. And sometimes a donkey came to call. It felt like a living within a wrinkle in time. Raw. Unreal. And ripe with a timeless beauty.

 

 

 

 

Doorways can also be less tangible. They can be more of a portal to take us from one world to another. This may be from the busyness of daily life, to a time of quiet contemplation in nature. Or from one level of consciousness to another through the portal of music or movement.

Pohutukawa Passage was inspired by the huge pohutukawa on the foreshore of the property where I live. The constant surge of the sea has created a distinctive portal framed by gnarled roots. Through the portal, hints of sunlight glinting off the waves suggest access to a different dimension.

For Māori, a significant old pohutukawa on the clifftop at Cape Reinga is truly a portal, because it is through the roots of the tree there that spirits of the dead begin their journey to their traditional homeland of Hawaiki.

 

At every level, doorways symbolize hope and change. They offer an opening into a new life. They are portals to the possible.