Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis Considered by Michael D. Higgins

A piece of bone skeletally suggests the remains of an embodied life form. Yet its cruciform signifies an event, an impaling, at a deeper level of meaning. Much more importantly, the form is in the process of becoming. It not only recalls or resonates. It envisages a new shape, a new existence. The form we take in any stretch of time or space is finite. The potential for metamorphosis is infinite. Padraic Reaney's work recalls the promise and the threat of that paradox that forms the root of all culture. We are as physical beings finite, but gifted or cursed with infinite imagination. The attempt at resolution of the paradox has given us art and artists. The suggestion of one signification giving way to another is a source of both humility and hope. That which we have not yet become beckons. That which we were is stripped bare, and becomes a badge of transience. One form of life giving way to another, all of the same stuff of dust, inescapably connected, makes moral invitation, a spiritual assertion. The ordinary is a microcosm of the process of cosmic change. It becomes wonderful. In looking at Padraic Reaney's work on one's wall one is invited to a meditative experience as well as a visual delight – to a metamorphosis of one's own. The spiritual courage alone in such work lifts it out of the ordinary.

Michael D. Higgins