THE SECRET PLACE
By Laura Stamps
 

In late summer, when high humidity wraps the pinewoods in ribbons of haze and the heat index towers at one hundred and ten degrees, the sun sucks the air from my lungs the instant I open the door.  And a fiery breeze, fanned by sizzling heat, trips through the city, flicking my hair.

After twenty-six summers in South Carolina I have learned to breathe under the heavy paw of humid heat.  Yet I will never glory in the rotisserie of an August sun, like this brassy marigold waving its apron of seaweed lace or that chickadee singing a stuttered song from the weeping yucca, as I dash to my car and its air-conditioned comfort.

Later, in the parking lot at the art supply store, I open my trunk, and a lizard half the length of my finger wiggles through the hinge, a reluctant traveler from the garden.
     
Once I start the car and roll forward, I hope he will tuck the sweet twig of his body back in the crevice hugging the trunk, and allow me to carry him home.  Instead, he scampers up the rear window, content to sip the wind for a while before flinging himself into the cool glove of a wooded field, daring to dream a new life.
     
How I will miss this adventurous lizard that was such a delight in the garden, jumping through porch railings, sliding deep into startling pink verbena, and sunning himself atop my parked car as his mossy suit changed from lime to beige, a futile attempt to blend with automotive paint.

Who is to say heaven on earth cannot be found in the scarlet feathers of a cardinal or the sulpher butterfly’s lemon wings?  
     
Beyond what the artist’s eye gathers, there seems to be a sacredness blooming within the cup of life’s details.  It is during those moments when I slow my pace that I notice this timeless place where contentment abides.

I am standing in the kitchen as a gnat floats before me like a parachutist, landing on the counter, hobbling off to perform hidden duties.
     
Lizards, marigolds, chickadees, gnats.  To my surprise, I no longer agree with the illusion of separation.  
     
Some strange softening is happening to me: the sharp edges of my personality blunted, while compassion’s flannel fingers fold around my soul, molding it in the image of the heavenlies.
 

*     *     *     *     *
 

I have been drawing and painting since I was a child, creating pictures I would stitch together in a book with a needle and thread borrowed from my mother’s sewing basket.
     
I don’t know why I became an artist, except it is the only thing I do well.  Painting is the one talent I own that satisfies every dark pavilion of my creative being, and there is much to be said for walking the world clutching this kind of happiness.
     
There is also the mysterious effect color has on my soul, bold color squeezed thickly from the tube onto a clean paper palette.  Color applied to the canvas in large areas that complement and excite, each humming its perfect tune.

Sometimes collectors ask difficult questions.  Mirabella, they say, How do you create a painting?  Where does it come from?  
     
I tell them paintings of realistic objects like florals, landscapes, and figures are created from observing the world.  
     
But an abstract painting must be coaxed like a wild bird from the tall grasses of the mind and spirit.  It is translated on canvas in the white heat of the hours bunching up until time holds no meaning, never knowing where the brush will rest next, allowing only the subconscious to lead one stroke at a time.  
     
Occasionally, I stop and step back to see which color or shape should intuitively follow.  And so it goes—hour after hour, time melting in my hands, days rolling into weeks until the composition is complete, and I am so physically and mentally drained I cannot remember my telephone number or date of birth.

That is the all-consuming process of abstract painting.  That’s what I tell them as I watch their eager faces melt into puzzled expressions.  
     
How did Hans Hofmann or Richard Diebenkorn address this issue, their genius bubbling fiercely from that secret place to the canvas decade after decade?

Again the day begins to roar.  When the heat of late summer wraps its steamy coat around us all, cicadas shriek from the trees, their cry a rough rattle flowing from day to night like violet waves on a dark beach or wind riffles swimming across a wheat field, back and forth, sound and silence—the winged litany of the Deep South.

There should be a better way to explain my painting process to collectors, rather than stumbling along like a gnat in a language only artists understand.  To some I must sound like a wizard conjuring these compositions from elements as mystical as sand and foam.  
     
On the other hand, there are certain creative zones in abstract painting that must be stroked, dark streets of the mind and soul the artist must travel.  Places where the wizard theory isn’t too far from the truth after all.
     
Yes, sometimes it is sand and foam.

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LAURA STAMPS has had hundreds of poems, short stories, and poetry book reviews published in literary journals, magazines, anthologies, and broadsides.  She is the author of more than twenty books of prose and poetry.  Her most recent book is a poetry collection, "Joy Unspeakable" (2003, Kittyfeather Press).  She grew up in the mountains of north Georgia and was educated at Dalton College (Dalton, GA) and the College of Charleston (Charleston, SC).