Cosmic Orphan
30 cm x 38 cm, acrylic on board
There is some kind of comfort in realising that nothing is fixed and nothing is truly solid, though our perception deceives us. Change is inevitable, it is nature's way and we are caught up in the current. Just as we are not fixed in space, we are not defined by who we are in one moment; what we see is a snapshot of a long journey, and at any junction, we might find we cannot say what we truly are. I took the title Cosmic Orphan from an essay I loved by Loren Eiseley, where he describes this ever-changing journey, "You are a changeling. Life is indefinite departure. That is why we are all orphans. Life is not stable. Everything alive is slipping through cracks and crevices in time, changing as it goes -- You have learned to ask questions. That is why you are an orphan. You are the only creature in the universe who knows what it has been. Now you must go on asking questions while all the time you are changing. You will ask what you are to become. The world will no longer satisfy you. You must find your way, your own true self."