Broken for You

Broken for You (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on tile, 6" x 6"

Recently I completed an online course, Art as a Healing Practice,  through Expressive Arts Florida.  At one point along the way, we were invited to consider how art might be made in response to tragedy, pain and suffering (the bombing in Boston had just occurred).   As I contemplated my own desire to create and offer a "healing image" in the face of tragedy, Broken for You emerged.  It did not start out to be this, but as I worked with the inks on the tile, moving them around, letting them dry, moving them around some more, and then removing some of it with a small brush dipped in blending solution, the image went through a sort of metamorphosis...from an angel...to a  woman weeping...to the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep across his shoulders, and then finally to the image you see here...a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  As I worked the inks, the words of Jesus at the Last Supper kept coming to mind, "This is my body, broken for you..."  In sharing this, I do not mean to make any sort of theological or political statement, but rather to offer up my own response to the brokenness of this world.  As providence would have it, this morning as I thought about  the painting  some more, an email arrived in my inbox that led me to this site (inward/outward) and in particular to this poem by Tobin Marsh entitled Things Break:

This side of the resurrection

In the brokenness, defeat and sorrow,

Is where lie all the deep lessons of my life.

Nothing wants to be broken,

And yet everything must be broken.

To never break is to lie stagnant and eventually die.

Things break.

I break now and again.

Picking up the pieces can be an act

Of profound faith.

-Tobin Marsh