PRINTS: THE CHALKBOARD
COLLECTION
One with the golden snow-sky, one with the rolling sea. At play with the koi, the stars, the rounding breeze. The whole kosmos is my love, every glint of light and dip of dark is my lover.
We meet each moment fresh, even while carrying memories of the past in our minds, hearts, bodies. Tattooed in our being, these impressions have forged us into who we are. Yet each moment is always an inner solstice, the balancing point between who we were, who we are, who we are becoming.
Dark waves cresting, fiery clouds streaming. A warrior, poised amid spring blossoms. The blue dragon swims through the sea, opening a new dawn.
A wintry churn of sea and stars, a young woman cloaked in furs. Through the wild tumult, a flowering. A seeing. A vision of the whole, the dance of life, the play, the cold waters, the dark and bright within us all.
Inside every moment, a deep stillness, a silence. A knowing blooms forth. From rest, rises action. A perfect knowing of what is next for us to do. Spring blossoms flower without being told. Waves swell and crest and fall, the sun rises and sets. Just so, we meet the moment. Fully alert, wholly awake, right in our action.
One of the greatest of delusions: we are separate, isolated, alone. In truth, we are so intimately interwoven. We know it through the soft purr of a cat, the slobbery happy tongue of a husky, the rosy alpenglow on craggy peaks, the blush on our cheeks when we feel our own aliveness. We are all kin.
Within the seed of me: the soul of the Kosmos itself. If I forget this (as I do), I feel the reminder in my love for the wild of horses, the sweet and tart of berries, the glow of lanterns in a pitch night, the play of trickster birds.
And if I’m still forgetting? I look to the umbilical cord streaming from my navel and see that - like everything and everyone - I too am sourced from the great full womb of Life, a creature born of dark and light, on a journey that never ends, only blooms from one emergence into the next, and always, always I am not other than the Origin itself.
If one were to see through the veils of time and space… to perceive the unfurling of the universe… to be a part of the creation of galaxies, friendships, and meaning… perhaps the one perceiving might feel and look like this: endlessly awake, infinitely confident, utterly landed.
In the darkest winters of the soul, we always hold the bloom of this next moment. The landscape may look sparse or the sky barren, yet we are born into Grace and all we are charged with is recognizing this. Receiving this. And then giving this forth.
The girl blooms into a woman. Communion, with all that is. Past and future distill into this one vibrant moment of grace.
A blush of warmth on lotus petals, a flush of pink on cheeks. Tree frogs croak and sing-song to the rising heat. The skin opens to the sun, the heart hums in the clear light of day. We bloom in the shine of the star within.
What sleeps beneath the warm summer-evening-boundary of our day-to-day consciousness? What young parts of us lay curled below, in the loamy darkness? “Integrare” is Latin; “to integrate”, “to make whole”. By touching into our depths, our partiality opens in a forever-widening embrace, and we become an endlessly unfolding Whole Human Being.
A new season opens here, in my heart, and all about me. I am the blessed, and the blessing. Receiving life, and giving it, indiscriminate, unending.
A flurry of swallows scatters to the sky, as the fox unfurls from fresh foliage and chases the next dream. Light and dark weave the day’s new hope.
A team of two, tumbling through wild thickets. Play and hunt grow from the same impulse. Gem-spores spill into the sky. Mountain jays fill the scene with a cacophony of song.
Birthed from spring’s life-push, the coyote leaps with fresh feeling into the wild blue, swallows rising from blossom-fields, the song of life unstoppable.
From the knotty tangles of plodding history, something new. A spark. A curiosity. A pull toward something wholly fresh.
Inside a creamsicle sky, two sisters ride the currents on a young mountain lion’s leap. Freedom, togetherness, through light and dark days.
The burst of spring, the flowering of life. To ride the giant cat into a pulsing blue sky, a satchel of gems strapped to my back.
Deep in a dream-jungle, power and poise. The thrum of hummingbirds, the heat of life. I know my place, I am clear, strong, alert, ready for all that is to come.
To know where I come from: the Void. With all the might and ferocity of dragons, the gentleness of fawns, the life that rises, and the life that falls. I hold it all in my embrace.
Unstoppable as the spring bloom, the heart unfurls wild and self-knowing through the window of the open soul. Creativity unfurls in an unending uprising of The Real. None are trampled, all have their place.
Without heart, he is a machine, an automaton. With heart, he is a warrior. From the radiant sun within, he gives life, he takes life, he serves life, he is life.
Deep. Quiet. The moment after summer tips over, and light and dark are equal. The warm rich smell of fallen leaves, a sky filled with gold and orange. She rises from this moment, weaving something new, from something so very ancient…
In my seat. In the furnace of the heart. The place of deep alchemy, where the sufferings of self versus other, of duality itself, are catalyzed into their true form. All belongs here in the burn furnace, all rises and falls here, all is known as Self here. I am intimate with everything, everything, everything under the sun and the midnight skies.
What am I willing to fight for? To die for? Wielding the sword of feeling-awareness, I will cut off the heads of delusion and distortion, slice through the fogs of apathy and asleepness, and free the glint of my soul to shine bright and clear in this world.
Perched in this moment, she smiles. She knows what it is to live from the heart-glow, the alchemical blaze inside. She is not diminished by the flux of things, the windswept sky, the fall of summer, sun-bleached bones. She is more alive than ever. She knows the genesis of all things. She is the end, the beginning, and everything in-between.
The autumn sun shines outward in all directions, ripening the world through another cycle. A great harvest is opening before us. Delivered on a warm breeze, carried in the little feet of birds gliding lightly, aloft in fiery swirls of hair. We know the joy of becoming one with the radiant star within.
Persephone has weathered the abduction, risen from her victimhood, and taken claim as Queen of the Underworld. No longer at the whim of the world, she braids the steed she rides and pulls it into her navel as an embryonic cord from the Source. In embracing all worlds, including the subterranean dark and the upper-world light, she knows herself as Whole, as the Origin of All Things.
“Bryce’s work evokes so much feeling, it speaks to me on another level. All of his works seem to move, and it’s difficult for me to put into words what his art means to me.”
Rachel
No act is beyond forgiveness, no life is beyond redemption. From the furnace of the heart, the phoenix of our soul rises into the cool clear winter, seeding the spring to come.