Healing Paths: Release and Transcendence by Steve Kline

Healing Paths | Kline-Misol | Kline

Artist's Statement A Dialogue with Nature The Transcendentalist movement in America began as a reform movement. The basic assumption being intuitive feelings, rather than rational, became the means for a conscious union of the psyche with the soul of the world. Although the philosophy was not religious in the traditional sense the followers embraced the notion that the soul of each individual is identical to the “world soul.” The natural world supplied to us the symbols that pointed to a deeper truth of existence. Nature was symbolic of a spiritual fact. The concept of “correspondence” suggested that all external reality is united with our internal psyche. Transcendentalists believed that “knowing yourself” and studying nature are the same activity. Many like John Muir believed the natural world was a mirror reflecting the psyche. The Hudson River painters gave shape to the ideals of this new philosophy. Durand and Cole depicted a wilderness in which man, small as he was within the vastness of creation, retained a divine spark that they believed completed a universal circle of harmony. Emerson was a leader in the movement and he said this: “Nature is a sea of forms radically alike…Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is directly related to the whole. Each particle is a microcosm and faithfully renders the likeness of the world.” This recent body of work has been an attempt to offer my meditations as I walk daily in the woods near me. The life that thrives therein is rich with inspiration that has fueled my imagination and taken me on a visual journey celebrating renewal. I have listened to the “voice of the wood.” I celebrate this earth and the changes of the seasons, which remind me of a continuous cycle of rebirth. God sleeps in minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in humans. – Sanskrit Aphorism

Healing Paths | Kline-Misol | Kline

The Poems The poems arose in the same territory that gave life to the paintings of Mary Kline-Misol: The misty and luminous regions of shared grief and healing. Their author is Mary's brother, Steve Kline. The earliest was written in 1982 – the year that Mary, Steve, their brother Greg and mother Betty lost their father and husband, Dick Kline, to cancer. In the same year Steve's wife, Susan, died of complications from juvenile onset diabetes. Nineteen eighty-two was The Year The Winter Broke Willows. The most recent were written 2013. Although none were written with this project in mind, the paintings and the poems have a shared language and dialect. The context in which this project was conceived was the recent loss of Mary's husband Sinesio. With one exception, there is no deliberate matching of poem to painting. The exception is the poem “Grandmother,” which was inspired by an ancient but still living tree that is recognizable in the painting Hsieh. Steve discerns the undying old woman's spirit in that Shade of a bird in the painting. A striking (and also unplanned) synchronicity is the presence of images of trees throughout the paintings and the poetry. Perhaps that points a way to wisdom: Trees heal. They recover from the most grievous insults and injuries. They know that there will be no healing if they attempt to un-root themselves and flee to numb spaces. The only way through pain is directly through it – Healing Paths lead you straight through regions you fear will be the end of you. Take the Path. You will find there is no other way out.

Steve Kline Mr. Kline is a graduate of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Over the years he has made a living as a newspaper and wire service editor and reporter, a public relations and marketing executive and, most recently, as an independent consultant. He currently is Senior Counsel at the fundraising and communication company HomeTeam Consulting, which has offices in Iowa and Nebraska. With his wife Jeanne he has three daughters, Kaci, Karyn and Sasha.

Healing Paths | Kline-Misol | Kline