Not too long ago, I finished a large oil painting I had been working on since May of 2025. From start to finish, the painting took about a year to complete. But it wasn’t a year of working “nose-to-the-grindstone.” I let the painting have space and take the time that it needed. I often took long breaks from it to work on other things, returning when I got inspired. I had a lot of fun playing around with the composition, painting over things, and generally keeping the painting “open” as long as possible.
After a year of playing around, I finally did feel like it was finally coming to a resolution, a place where I would be satisfied to call it “finished.” Around this time, my poet friend Kat came to visit and saw the painting-in-progress and exclaimed happily:
“Everything is brighter because of the music!”
I was delighted by her words, and the phrase became the title of the painting.
During the course of the year that I worked on this painting, I painted freely, without inhibitions. I let the images come to me unplanned, from my heart to my paintbrush. Stepping back at one point, I realized I had painted a lot of circles: the full moon, the round table, the bowl of fruit, the curves of the upright bass, and on and on. I didn’t consciously plan to include “circle symbolism,” but when I looked, I could could see it there. So I allowed myself to indulge in some philosophical musings. What did it mean? Why were there so many circles?
Here’s my answer: the circles are all about Time, or Life. We often talk about the “circle of life.” This is reinforced through the repetition of seasons, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun. When I was a little kid, I must have watched the animated 1973 Charlotte’s Web dozens of times, and I’m sure I was greatly influenced by this gorgeous song: Mother Earth and Father Time. In fact, I feel the song’s influence behind much of my creative work.
The cat stands guard, white like a ghost or spirit, because—in my personal mythology—cats are guardians of the spirit world and know the ways of traveling through it. They have some ability to detach from the regular mundane calendar or life. This cat stands like a benevolent guide in the center of the painting.
The woman in the green shirt is meant to be me, although I know she doesn’t look like me with any great accuracy. But this is how I feel about being me, if that makes sense. In the painting, I am looking back, towards the little boy at the table.
The little boy is my son Morgan when he was small, perhaps 4 or 5 years old. I gaze at him with some wistfulness, longing to return to that beautiful moment in time. Of course it is impossible to time-travel, or to hold onto time as it passes.
“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”
―Heraclitus
On the other side of the painting, Morgan stands tall, looking like he does now at age 16, tall and almost grown-up. He plays his upright bass, perhaps some jazz melodies, and the music sweeps through the room on a pale blue translucent curtain, touching everything, making everything more lovely.
I’m not arguing with Heraclitis: everything is always changing, and children are always growing up too fast. But there is another way to experience things. When Time is a circle, at least in the world of this painting, then everything is eternal, and the beautiful moment is always with me. The fruitful table of life holds everything, and there is plenty of room for past and present and future to exist all together: an abundance of time.
In addition to Time, Music is also an important motif, perhaps the most important.
I wanted it to feel like music was coming out of the painting, into the world, so that the real viewers standing in front of the painting could almost hear the music!
The music is just like the moonlight, it comes into the room and pours through the glass vase, illuminating flowers, fruit, and vessels. The light—and the music—touches and transforms everything and everyone.
Music can be that way, utterly transforming reality. Even if the boy was playing the bass in a dingy basement with no windows and ugly brown walls, the music could create the feeling of a window into a garden of flowers and moonlight, at least for a few moments, and many hearts would be uplifted.
The music can create a sacred circle, within which the beautiful moment is eternal. In this way music—and art—is a gift to the world.
Here I am in the process of happily painting this piece, back in January, I believe. Photo Credit: Zane Pysher
