Thad’s is blessed to have such a culturally diverse community of artists, including actors, writers, musicians, painters and sculptors.  Susan Carter Hall is one such artist.  To celebrate the Easter season, Susan has shared this thoughtful and beautiful piece with us.  The intention is that it will help give expression to the fullness of the experience of Easter, which is ultimately, an expression of the God-Love-Life: Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Thank you, Susan, for the gift of your talents and artistic vision.

Susan’s work can be viewed on her website, www.susancarterhall.com.

Easter 2010 – click here for painting.

Here are a few words from Susan regarding the painting:

I feel like this image could represent a lot to a lot of people.  To me, this is what I feel:  first of all you have the outlines of the people in the bottom right – they are on the journey of life – they are walking towards and away – no one way to go.  In the distance there is a lot of action, a lot of choices, a lot of distractions and activity (shapes and colors to be literal).  There are lights and darks – light and dark represent a lot (to me) – sometimes we feel in the dark and sometimes the light shines on us.  But, they are both necessary – to fully experience one, we sometimes have to fully experience the other, to be aware.

The little man in the black box in the bottom right corner – he has a lot baggage.  He is in the dark – alone and fearful – kind of afraid to step out and experience life.  Yet, in the opposite corner at the top – there is a myna bird (a gregarious bird – sitting on an outline of a hand).  This bird is free – free to fly.  Perhaps he is sitting on God’s hand – or just a helping hand.  He is free to fly and he accepts a helping hand.  He has “checked” a lot of baggage, this bird.  The outlined people – they are at different stages: some may still be attached to their own way, some are trying to figure it all out, some still like to go to Disney World on vacations….

In the top left corner are butterflies, colorful butterflies.  They are also free.  Maybe they are like angels and they have an outlet off the canvas (they have a way to fly higher – ascend into the sky beyond the limitations of this earth – or literally the limitations of the boundary of this canvas – all other elements are contained within.

There is also an excerpt from a book collaged into the bottom right that says:

“What is required to participate more fully in our own health and well-being is simply to listen more carefully and to trust what we hear, to trust the messages from our own life, from our own body and mind and feelings…Life on earth is a whole, yet expresses itself in unique time bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living.  So there can be no one place to be, there can be no one way to be, there can be no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love.  No one way to grow or to heal.  No one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known.  The particulars count.”

- Susan Carter Hall