the view from inside the cave, Monotype of the Day #480

Day 114 of Year 2 (Actually Day 115)

I actually fell asleep twice during dinner! I guess I'm still recovering from the studio tour this weekend. 😊 Somehow though I managed to get up and made my print. It was tough physically, but mentally I'm raring to go. Something about doing all those demos reinvigorated my excitement for printmaking. We shall see how this unfolds. In the meantime, after making tonight's image, Plato's allegory of the cave immediately came to mind. The idea that we are trapped in a cave just seeing shadows of ideal forms always struck me deeply. In the past, I thought of these shadows as somehow dark or broken, lacking beauty. Now I see them as beautiful reflections of Light. I guess that's a fundamental shift in my perspective on the world. It's brought about by the healing nature of illness, like a water carving away stone, it has washed away so many darker emotions. In some medieval texts, forms in the world are described as vestiges or footprints of the divine. I like that more than shadows. All forms in the world are like keyholes, we can look through them and get a peak beyond the veil. It takes the right mindset, but it's a beautiful world and the veil can be very thin.