Thresholds and Threads

by rebeccaMpells

Everywhere you look there are thresholds. And I am drawn to them as a moth to light. They have become the premiere focus of my painting and writing. There are obvious thresholds like stepping from the kitchen into the garden or crossing a border from one country to another; tactile thresholds – holding hands, exchanging a kiss, lovemaking . . . and emotional thresholds as we shuttle on the vine of life from enjoyment to sadness and back again.

Some thresholds we have no choice but to cross as in birth and death. Others are imposed against our wishes like redundancy or the end of a relationship. And yet so often it is within the tangled web of ensuing chaos that growth and wisdom are woven. What we resist is actually the very thing which will take us forward if we find the courage to make the step; if we cease wondering what life would be like, cross the threshold and allow ourselves to experience it.

Windows, doors, gateways, pillars and paths – all fascinate and pull me, like an invisible thread tugging, weaving it’s way between the weft of the physical and the emotional warp, between the real and the imagined. A tangled knot of thresholds, examined from all angles, picked, pulled and tightened by thoughts spinning beyond control. Only then it seems, in frustrated desperation am I ready to spool words forth or paint, carding the thoughts from entwined mass, teasing onto canvas until an image – and a way forward – begins to reveal itself.

And thus another threshold has been crossed.

‘The Bread Oven’ watercolour