Shiva V, Autumn

Oil on Belgian linen

71.5 x 92xm

‘Shiva’ meaning seven is the seven days of mourning in the Jewish tradition, referred to in as ‘sitting shiva’ – when one stays at home and visited by friends and family with food and nourishment. It is also a time when one rekindles hope.”

Gustav Mahler, born Jewish and then converting to Christianity later in life, often started his Symphonies with an ending - life’s ending. The first movements are often a melody of funerary marches, as if these endings mark a time of beginnings for the living. In Judiasm, when a dear one passes, one sits for seven days in silence. This ritual is sitting shiva. In silence, the sitter attunes themselves to the passing of memories, of experiences, of meaning, of hope – like Mahler’s Adagiettos – and all the while, the passage of time heals. And so it is in the world, when those dear ones pass, as with the life and work of Colin McCahon, of Ian Fairweather or Hilma af Klint, or when we are tested by those life arresting events that stop life in its tracks; a flood, a fire, a plague. We then sit in patience, in shiva. That time in stillness is healing, almost unbeknownst to us, so that one day beauty and presence can return.