I was going through some of my poetry today and found the following that I wrote some time ago.
Morningstar619
Life has broken his heart
It has blown it all apart
Between the pieces that remain
He’s looking for something to keep him sane
In the space between the pain
He’ll find the Love that does not change
© Jill Joy August 2012
Emotions are a dicey proposition. We need to experience and understand them in order to grow and heal. At the same time if we allow them to overwhelm us, we can get into trouble. Repression, on the other hand, is just as bad leading to stagnation.
Jill Joy - Dissolution - oil on canvas - 60x72"
In this work, which I create on an as needed basis to cope with strong feelings, I have allowed myself a constructive way to feel and process my emotions: Giving them life and expression, but not allowing them to overwhelm me or anyone else. And in the process a dynamic piece of art is created that, having transformed me, has I believe, the power to transform the viewer.
Jill Joy - Divertere - oil on canvas - 36x36"
In the continuing quest of evolving consciousness through art this is one of my latest creations:
Jill Joy - I Thought The World of You - oil on canvas - 48x60" - 2015
Below is a photo from my art studio on my easle. This work has a lighter palette than I have been working in lately. It's part of the process of working through the end of a relationship that meant a lot to me. I ended it, I have come to understand, because it no longer served my soul and my growth as a person and an artist. I ended it despite a very strong feeling of love for this person. Art is for me a way of processing my life. I express my thought and emotions through my abstract painting as thoughts and emotions are abstract.
That is the beauty of contemporary art in my opinion: It give us a visible, tangible access to those processes within ourselves, our lives and our emotions that we can't see.
Jill Joy, I Thought The World of You, oil on canvas, 48x60x2.5", 2015
So I've been going back and forth, back and forth on it in my mind. Niggling it, worrying it, wondering about it. But when I think about returning to the same situation, I just can't fathom it. Lately I've been realizing it's important that I acknowledge that I can love some one even if it's not sustainable. People are in our lives for a reason if our stated purpose is spiritual growth. None the less, I can still love even if my soul no longer grows from the connection and thus I can't have them close to me. It's sad in someways but freeing as well. The freedom to grow is the most powerful freedom of all.
I was at a party over the holidays and found myself queried about my art. It's often very difficult for an abstract artist to describe his or her art because the concepts are often abstract ideas that the artist is attempting to represent visually. When I got home I decided I needed to summarize exactly what it is my work is about. Not just for my fellow humans, but for also me. So here’s what I came up with that seemed to encompass 20+ years of painting and the evolution across a multitude of styles:
Jill Joy – Purple Sky – oil on canvas – 36×36
“My work is essentially about enlightenment: Transcending individual thoughts, emotions and experiences towards identification with something beyond the self that is universal and all encompassing. My art seeks to understand our place in the universe, the transience of life and the existence of a broader vibrational field of love that encompasses us all.”
Jill Joy - Thought Forms compassion - oil on canvas - 20x60 - 2014