"Shimmer."
The joy of friendship. For Karen Parker Lears.
DECEMBER 10—There was for me a tender fondness—yes, love—from the beginning: dark hair, fine features, the mind and curiosity of a naturalist, the soul of a poet. We met for the first time in February 2020 and spent a happy few days together. The pandemic was then a distant rumble, a storm still building before the break.
We were two couples that weekend sitting close around a dancing crackling fire. We drank wine or tea depending upon the time, discussed politics, culture and art, acknowledged the sadness of life, found cause for laughter.
In the last hours of our last morning together we visited Karen’s studio where she showed me a large canvass—three feet by four, recently finished—all white and glistening with the subtlest blue, the barest blush of aged ivory. “Ah,” it was titled, inspired by the sound of that single syllable.
Ahhh, it was. The sky after a violent storm. Space cleansed. The ferocious clashing of elemental forces spent. That’s how my companion saw it and I saw in his eyes as he gazed on the painting something of awe. For me the painting and my experience of it—are these not the same?—remain indescribable.
Karen is an inventive artist, frequently experimenting with mediums in her exploration of the ephemeral—prayer and dream, the many landscapes of her heart. Painting as poetry—or do I mean it the other way? To my eye there is in much of her work a deceptive simplicity, inviting me to linger and turn inward in order to better see—to feel and find my way
As with any art, the best of friendship is just that, an invitation: to look and listen more deeply and so to know not only one’s friend but oneself more completely. To love a friend is to discover and love oneself and the world all over again.
The liminal and elusive
A month ago Karen was, in her most recent work, pursuing “shimmer.” By which she means something much more than mere surface illusion. A recent and brief email exchange clarified, to some small extent, my understanding of what she seeks.
C: I value what I think of as your rejection of absolutes.
K: You are ‘absolutely’ correct that I find absolutes dangerously unlivable...and possibly unnatural. Very appealing? Possibly seductive. Possibly ideal...so ok with the ideal—with the understanding that we mortals can only aspire to the Ideal and achieve it, if at all, fleetingly.
There’s the shimmer.
K: To clarify—What I love, in art and in life, is leaving room for imperfection. Accidents. Openings.
C: Yes. We share that though I have to guard against a tendency to sometimes want definitive answers. It's a tension.
K: “It’s a tension...”
There’s the shimmer.
Friendship. Accidental openings. Tension. Love. Life shimmers with these.