Soul Steps 4

So often when we walk in a forest, or along a winding path, we look down at the ground, the next step, the surface underfoot. It is an instinct: the body protecting itself, checking that the path continues, that we don't trip up. But there is something else in that downward gaze. A kind of concentration, a withdrawal from the horizon into the immediate.

The Soul Steps series began with an instinctive attraction to some stone stairs of a Kyoto monastery, where I saw a parallel with the soul's movement from the concrete to the ethereal. This smaller painting, focusses on the minutiae, the single step, the shifting patch of ground, the moment by moment contact. We move along the path without necessarily knowing we are doing so.

Most of us navigate our lives this way, head down, attending to what is immediately beneath us, without looking up at the bigger picture, the beautiful scenery that has passed unnoticed, and too often, years of our lives can pass unregarded.