Love Is Proved In The Letting Go
Amaya D.M.
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I made this artwork as a gift to my dying grandfather. I wanted to capture the beauty of his death because it felt like an outcry of wild beauty. I saw the body of the bird in my grandpa as he became a piece of the world, no longer separate from the elements that created his hand, his mustache, the wrinkles around his eyes. We reached for him, of course, because we love him, and that reach is what I show in this picture. It is the outcry. It is a celebration of heart-wrenching loss. He will not return. Nor will the bird, who, in all her wildness, has left the hand of those who loved her because it was time to go. I spent hours making the linoleum at a press near my house, and I only added the LOVE behind it later, when I realized that it was love that held the piece together, kept the arm reaching out for the bird. Then it felt complete.
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As a physical space of creation, it expresses my understanding of the world outside of my body in a way that is very important to me.
