Acceptance
At the inflection of acceptance, there is both contraction and expansion, loss and hope. It’s about letting go of what could be, accepting what is, and expanding into possibility.
I’ve recently been thinking about acceptance and the emotional landscape one traverses through the process. Each phase of the journey is an opportunity to shift perspective, to release, and, ultimately, to grow.
I often discuss my mediation practice and how I see and feel colors while meditating. In the summer of 2023, I experienced a meditation in which yellows gently fluctuated from deep ochre to sunshine to straw as pure white light pierced the color veils. The color experience brought the message of absolute acceptance. It was a blanket of acceptance.
I often dip back into this meditative vision. It’s been a place of comfort for over two years, but recently I’m understanding the nuances of the colors that come.
At the inflection of acceptance, there is both contraction and expansion, loss and hope. It’s about letting go of what could be, accepting what is, and then going back to what could be—just in a different way, with other circumstances.
Accepting loss, settling into it, and grounding your experience of it are precursors to the expansion of possibility. It’s the expansion we seek, but we can not fully expand into possibility without accepting the loss.
The meditation came the same summer we moved from rural New Jersey to South Florida. Our children were 11, 9, and 6. The move was a big leap. We wanted to live where the weather was warmer—namely, to boost my health—but we were leaving my doctors and the region I’d called home for nearly 20 years and where my husband had lived his whole life.
But we heard the whispers. Something was calling us.
Looking back now, our move to Florida was the conclusion of what we’d started four years before. In 2019, a year after my first cancer surgery, we left our beloved community of Maplewood and South Orange, New Jersey, for rural farmland still within commuting distance of Manhattan. Our rural farmhouse was just a stopover, where we were meant to heal and find each other again, where, hopefully, our children would understand I was managing my cancer and would be fine for many decades. In 2019, we knew our path was different from the suburban life we’d created, but we weren't clear on what was next.
What I’ve gained clarity on recently is that we’ve been on a years-long process of accepting. To accept the tenuous nature of health and to live with purpose, according to our values, we had to grieve many aspects of our previous life.
I still struggle with this grief—albeit not often—but perhaps more time in this meditation, with these colors and visceral emotions, will strengthen me and allow me to accept these losses. And in accepting, maybe the possibilities that lie ahead will expand further.
The meditation I experience is like swimming in an underwater watercolor painting. There are different densities of color, ranging from opaque to fluid and transparent. The deep, earthy ochre holds the pain of loss. It’s muddy, sticky, and hurts when I near it, so I travel towards the light and the brightest yellow, instead, where the colors are hopeful, expansive, and enduring, full of possibility.
In the installation Absolute Acceptance, I explore the counterbalance of this contraction and expansion, this loss and hope. The rich, bright yellow is intended to reach out and envelop the viewer from a distance, across the gallery, with its expanding energy of hope—the hope that rises after the loss of acceptance. The work is hand-built from white stoneware and color-blocked with many layers of underglaze and glaze, creating the density of color that allows it to move forward with the expansion of hope.
This was quite a long share—thanks so much for staying with it. Writing helps me understand my meditations, experiences, and art, and how they’re intertwined. I still have a lot to learn from this meditation. I will continue on.
Happy Sunday!
XO
Landis
Absolute Acceptance, photographed above, explores a color vision that ceramic artist Landis Carey experienced in the summer of 2023, in which yellows gently fluctuated from deep ochre to sunshine to straw as pure white light pierced the color veils. The color experience brought the message of absolute acceptance and remains a place of meditation that the artist often taps into. Hand-built from white stoneware clay, ceramic artist Landis Carey glazed Absolute Acceptance to draw upon the densest yellow of her color vision, which holds the strongest feelings of absolute acceptance. The artist presents this message while juxtaposing it with the most earthy, grounding yellow she experienced during that meditation. The rich, deep yellows of Absolute Acceptance are intended to reach out and envelop the viewer from a distance, drawing them into the simultaneous feelings of momentary contraction and enduring expansion that mark the point of acceptance. For more of Landis’s art, follow her on Instagram.