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bill holden
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Biography
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Statement
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Windows and Memory are both important aspects of the paintings as they form
the iconographic sense of their primary purpose. The initial vision first came
when as a poet there was a need to see beyond words of human language.
The paintings the vision brought caused a transfiguration of my poetry and
opened an ancient source from a sea of forgotten memory that I have come
to know as Sappho for reasons I cannot necessarily explain. Through the Sappho
images came Kyprian Memory ( Aphrodite ) who mysteriously surfaced from all
that is unknown, as once She is said to have appeared near the coastline of Cyprus.
This became the means by which Her ( Aphrodite's ) vision communicated its gift allowing me to see what I was unable to write. This is not saying I had the natural
ability to paint it either, as the paintings became an extension of the Gift, and by seeing
through the Windows of this gift and gaining what Memory it restored I became able
to write through what Her vision permitted me to gaze upon, and through its window, Aphrodite's Holy Spirit brought an ability to restore Her remembrance through the
body of Sappho and the appearance of Her own sacred form, which are the features
and essence of what has been painted.
In this manner the writings and paintings became likeminded as they also became
portals to the past, present and future simultaneously, and at times forcing open spaces allowing unseen words to appear that are no longer confined to the realm of human definition, and brush strokes in the silence of what cannot be seen by physical eyes.
In spaces upon paper and upon the expanse of convas, utterances manifested to my conscious mind and suddenly became a truer form of communication from a language
of what cannot be formulated as words articulated between mind and mouth, or strokes
from a brush between mind and hand, but more from what is groaned by the Psyche, or
spiritual womb of our eternal being.
Now when I look upon papyri fragments of Sappho's poetry it appears more like a sacrament of her broken body, in the same sense as broken bread represents the torn
body of Christ. To partake is to remember. The seeing is the partaking, and the memory
it produces brings back from the winedark deep the mystery of Aphrodite rising from a sea of the unconscious as the Holy Spirit rises from the mystery of Christ's sacred body.
Here is the painting and poetry of the One who was, and who is, and who shall forever be. Whether She appears as the Goddess of Love or the Mother of Eros, She was the object of desire in Sappho's poetry and from its morsels Her form and grace are still received in the same manner Holy Spirit rises from the remembrance of the Christ body that is taken as communion with its memory of what was, and is, and shall forever be.
The Eros is the passion of Creation and is the Logos forming utterance and the words
and images reaching beyond mortal comprehension. Here are Windows and Memory forming an Iconography by which the emergence of what cannot be seen might be seen as once the children of Cyprus gathered by the sound rising from the ocean when the one who is ` Not Known ' as the poet H. D. would have said, is suddenly and unexpectedly known by our spirit communing with Her sacred Presence.
Here also, the windows give a view not only into what was `not known' because it had been forgotten, but also allowing us to view upon the unexpected, as Aphrodite rises into
the unconscious realm of mind and soul as the Holy Spirit, and Her child, Eros
is the passion-filled Christ for which the world was made and by which the world was saved. This is the charis ( grace ) often found in the torn papyri of Sappho's poetry just
as it is found in the Gospel of the Christ.
Here in this room, the gallery becomes a Sanctuary. Here is the only statement of the
paintings, that the unknown grace and light and beauty of its forgotten mystery might
again be seen although it is impossible to be seen by physical eyes.
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Exhibitions
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