Michelle DeMarco - Painter

I came, as many do, to find my spiritual path from a period of immense pain and loss in my life. Pain can make us bitter and angry or it can break our hearts wide open to reveal our divinity, that spark of life which we all share. And once realized I think we can never return to our isolation, our smallness. We emerge into the vast web of life which we are a part. During the beginning of this period in my life I spent many hours walking along the Maine coast finding comfort in its wild and rocky shores. I turned to my practices of meditation and yoga, to good friends - old and new, and looked deeply within to who I was and how I wanted to live the rest of this precious life.

The Summer Day

Who made this world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

 

Becoming intimate with pain is the key to changing our core of our being-staying open to everything we experience, letting the sharpness of difficult times pierce us to the heart, letting these times open us, humble us, and make us wiser and more brave." Pema ChodronI drew on many influences and resources as I reformed my life, sometimes consciously choosing, but more often than not they would arrive of their own accord. It was a time when I learned about grace. I learned about trust . . . not in others, but I do, in me. I trust that I have an inner knowing that guides me and it is not separate from this world. There is a quote I sometimes use with my work and I don't know where it came from but here it is:

Consider stones as icons and you will come to understand the interconnected nature of our human relationship to the earth; consider longer, and your relationship will not be to the earth but with the earth. Consider it long enough and you will become the earth.

Spiritus Mundi

My painting is an expression of our shared humanity and our connection, not only to one another, but to all of life. It is through this relationship that my work is born. We are blessed, as Alice Walker says, to live in in the best of times. A time, I believe when we can accomplish much from our wide open hearts.

This is the best of times to be alive because there is so much work to do-so many poor to house and feed, so much opportunity for self-realization, the earth itself to be saved. Alice Walker

I am thankful to Annie for allowing me to be a part of this community.
Blessings, Michelle

Tenderness for life, bodhichitta, awakens when we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. We train in the bodhichitta practices in order to become so open that we can take the pain of the  world in, let it touch our hearts and turn it into compassion. Pema Chodron

Suffice It to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your
life, there's only one place to look: inside you. When you look, do it
with love. - Ihaleakala Hew Len

To purchase a print of her image Spiritus Mundi visit here.

Michelle's website is beautiful. Visit it here. ( High speed connection recommended)