From Camino to Collaboration

Four Hands Susan Suzanne
Four Hands Painting Exhibit Information and Facebook Invitation
Dear Friends,

This is a belated thank-you note for following me on my Camino  journey, both inner and outer. Many of you have asked how the Camino has changed me. I am just three months out of it now, and have resumed my art life. Events have “followed fast and followed faster,” as Edgar Allen Poe would say.

What changes are showing up at this point after the Camino?  I feel lighter and more complete with my life as it is.  I am more able to celebrate who I am, rather than mourning who or what I don’t have, or focusing overmuch on my mistakes.  This change seems subtle but profound.  I have created some new paintings, filled with gold leaf and gold light, that  may have emerged from the many gilded churches of Spain. Projects are coming to completion, including the Four Hands Painting collaboration with knockout artist and close friend Susan Cornelis.  Our show is called The Golden Thread– the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth.

It’s not all sweetness and light, though.  My world seems to be full of beautiful, artistic women who have contracted cancer.  If I were the kind of person who reads omens– and you know I am– I would say that life is issuing a kind of Carpe Diem announcement, a Tempus Fugit warning.   I remember the wonderful Franciscan chapel of Rome filled with little skulls and hourglasses of time flying by, made of browned bones mounted on sky-blue crypt walls.  Scott and I visited this crypt, and I was surprised at the beauty and delicacy of the art.  Part of my life feels like this.. a skull with butterfly wings.skull with wings

So what’s it to be?  Bliss or bones or golden thread,  skull or butterfly wings, or some delicate combination of all these?

I’m glad to be on the road with you again.    This time, the road is my life. Yours, Suzanne

4 thoughts on “From Camino to Collaboration

    1. I was surprised by how much meaning it had for me. I felt the presence strongly of other… the spirits of past pilgrims and and presence of virtual friends. It was probably the best online experience I ever had… authentic, and I could barely check email or notifications, so no obsessive computer use.

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  1. Along with “Carpe diem” there is “Ars longa, vita brevis…”

    Actually, when I had to look up exactly how this was spelled (lacking an “auto-correct” for Latin,) I found the complete aphorism:

    Vita brevis,
    ars longa,
    occasio praeceps,
    experimentum periculosum,
    iudicium difficile.

    Life is short,
    and art long,
    opportunity fleeting,
    experience perilous,
    and decision difficult.

    Gold is mutable but never changing — I look forward to see where the “golden thread” of your new exhibition will lead….

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