Carolyne King: The Space Between

"The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed." - Joseph Campbell

A few months after my last show at ARC, Fractured States, my mother was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. She passed away 17 months later and it seemed as if the concepts that exhibition had discussed were a reality for me. The fight for connection had, at least artistically, given way to loss and inertia. But something else happened too during this time. I fell in love. Simultaneously, I was experiencing the worst of pain and best of happiness.

Grief - Solace - Sadness - Joy

These four words became a mantra that kept ringing around my head. And slowly the focus of the work began to build on the peace and silence created by negative space, harmony between color and each piece's collage element.

Yet, The Space Between, like Fractured States, A Delicate Balance and Fragile States before it, is also a reflection of my belief that we are on a continuous and circuitous path of creation, illumination, and spiritual progression towards one’s place within the universe. I fully believe in the Buddhist practice of re-learning what one has learned for while the lesson has remained the same, the person has changed. And the loss of my mother has changed me on a deep level.

As the work for this exhibition began to take shape so did the realization that in creating this current body of work I was putting into practice my own artistic concepts, as both an action of living and an action of creativity. The Space Between is a, “fight for connection in the face of dissolution…Even if it seems components are being forced together, in the end, each piece that goes into the artwork has a purpose. It is not always an easy progression and there is strife and loss on the way. And sometimes the simple belief that things will be better is enough to hold even the smallest connection together.”

See more about Carolyne King here: https://carolyneking.com/