Winged Victory Opening Reception

New paintings and works on paper from Deborah Gavel inspired by the Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic, Rumi. Runs through 7/25.

There is a Rumi poem which includes this sequence of words, “something opens our wings.”   As I venture into new subject matter in the past two and a half years, into the worlds of the winged ones, Rumi’s words gives me pause.   I have, for over twenty-five years, worked with mandalas, circles, medicine wheels, symmetry, pattern and the abstracted imagery of plants but early in 2015 a Sandhill crane asked to be painted.   A long story, a chance meeting, a love affair with Sandhill cranes started me painting feathers.  The metaphor of flight and ascension is certainly part of the attraction for me, a desire for my own wings, yes, but more importantly these paintings are of specific encounters with specific birds: portraiture.  Each painted image shown here has a story, a meeting with the spirit of each and other.