and what you do not know is the only thing you know

Open Heart, encaustic on paper, thread on silk

The text is from East Coker by T.S. Eliot.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

The complete poem is here. I read this verse as advice about how to be an artist (and a human). How scary it is to do things that one really wants to do, rather than fall back on what one knows how to do already.

This piece sold through the Perivale in August.

Jeana Marie has stretched her hand out to me from Australia. I stretch mine back to her with an open heart. You've gotta be in awe of it, the power of the internet.