and of course, this is what this counting has been all about - 49 days of the omer. seven weeks of seven days between pesach, the festival of freedom from the narrow places, to Shavuot. the festival of being open and receiving Torah, wisdom, commitment to a relationship of a life of constructing and creating meaning.... we are here. we have travelled through the weeks of ever increasing complexity.
and 49 is the number of days and nights that Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, spent meditating.
This counting, like previous years, has ended up in a completely different place than where I thought it would go. I thought I might end up going 3D as the numbers got too big to go around a circle. But they never got too big to go around the circle. The circle got slightly bigger... (fyi these drawings are in 2 5 x 5" sketchbooks. each circle is approx 10cm diameter. They were drawn with a H pencil, then painted with water-colour. My starting point was just to plot the numbers and find how they resonate, or not, within jewish tradition and general culture. And to make pretty patterns with a compass and ruler. Which is very enjoyable, and as the patterns got more complex, they became quite meditative and calming to paint. I really like how this series developed, and find the earlier ones crude and want to go back and redo them. I won't of course - that would belie the transformation that occurred during these 49 days. and I do need to give my eyes a bit of a rest. definitely had eye-strain during the last week.
so thank you to everyone who has followed these drawings, and supported yet another crazy drawing-a-day project.
chag samech
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