Landscape of the Soul

"Golden Earring" from Beading Her Image

Excerpt from Margie’s Muse, April 2010

I am and always have been fascinated with faces. I have a library full of portrait photography books, just to study faces. I draw them on a weekly, if not daily, basis. I photograph them. (I wish I could ask more strangers if I can photograph them, but the few times I have, it frightens folks… so I stick to people I know.) I go to the movies in hopes of big screen close ups… giant faces. I’m thrilled when they are so big I can see the pores! Women, men, any race, any color, any age (the older the more intriguing)… it doesn’t matter… I love faces.

I draw and paint so many faces that people tend to label this preoccupation as portrait painting. But I’m not a portrait painter. I am not as interested in who I am painting as I am the expressions and the feeling that the face conveys. I prefer depicting faces of people I don’t know so I don’t get caught up in trying to create a realistic portrait. And I don’t use flesh tones or realistic colors.

I consider my depictions of faces “landscapes of the Soul,” not portraits.

"Iris" from the book Beading Her Image

It is the Soul I am seeking. The Soul beyond the face.

A painting hangs on our meditation room wall. Its my favorite of all I have painted so far. When I sit quietly and look at it and let it look at me, I sense myself standing taller. I feel a surge of being filled with more power than I am aware of throughout my day. I look at Her face and realize “This is who I want to be. Everything I sense in this face is where I am headed.”

These are the kinds of feelings and thoughts I want my landscapes of the Soul to inspire in viewers. I want them to instill a sense of more in each viewer: “There is more than this I see right now. I can be more. I can want more. I am more than who I think I am.”

I chose to create Beading Her Image for two reasons: to unabashedly indulge myself in the study of more faces. And to honor the sacred of women: those innate qualities that women have (and often deny) of power, charm, compassion, and beauty (not the magazine kind).

Beading Her Image has been out 5 years now, and is not slowing in popularity.

My hope is that the beaded landscapes of the Soul in the book fill you with more of your own beauty.