"Out of the Darkness came Light"
  


My thoughts were a long way from spiritual ones on the day it all happened. I was very busy at the drawing board caught up in the RAT RACE we call success. A home with a custom built swimming pool, the proper Cadillac and station wagon. A lovely wife, seven great children, a live in Mother and Father-in-law, two dogs, three cats, fifteen snakes, four turtles, etc., etc. When the phone rang and the caller introduced herself, I remembered a promise I had made five months earlier, a promise to do a painting for a religious art show – a promise I had forgotten minutes after I had made it. I decided to tell a little white lie rather than to admit to my thoughtlessness. I said I had not finished the painting. She asked me how much more time I needed. I lied “At least a whole day”. (That, I hoped, should get me out of the task in as much as the preview dinner for the show was the very next day.)

But the lady persisted. She asked me the size of the painting. I deliberately mentioned an extra large size in the desperate hope that a large painting would disqualify me from the exhibit. I congratulated myself inwardly on what I considered a clever ploy. She wasn’t finished yet – she asked me to go ahead and complete the painting, “I will save a place for it”, she said. I politely agreed and – I felt trapped – my heart sank at the thought of all the extra work, and for what? There was no money in it for me!


Angry at myself and the world, I grabbed the only stretched canvas in the studio. It fit the frame in which I kept a favorite portrait of my wife, Mary, (it happened to be the same size I mentioned on the phone). Since I was accustomed to working all night in order to meet deadlines, I decided to get started on a simple abstract painting and, as I said to myself, “get the whole thing done with and out of my hair”. It was two o’clock in the afternoon as I started on one idea after another only to face failure after failure – not one idea worked. These failures underscored flashes of my adult life – my preoccupation with the material things of life while turning my back on the spiritual life. There crossed my mind flashes of get-rich-quick schemes that failed due to some shady associations culminating with hopes and dreams shattered by a near fatal accident in Canada which crippled my painting ability. Coupled with that I lost my art service studio in New York. Failure after failure came hurtling through my mind.

I looked at my watch, twelve hours had flown by, it was now 2:00 AM. In utter desperation I cried out; “that’s what I get for lying, GOD, I’ll never lie again!” Grabbing my brushes I jumped up and flung them to the floor. At that instant a flash of light filled the room and for a split-second His face appeared on the canvas.
The torment of all the years vanished with that flash and a tremendous surge of energy filled me – it was incredible – it was wonderful. “That’s it!” I cried out. Picking up a brush I followed the oval of the face I had seen – I painted a “T” for the eyes and nose – then I rushed around the studio gathering up pictures of people’s faces – men, women, children, anybody, without rhyme or reason. There was no preliminary sketch, no blocking or planning at all. I started with the face that formed the end of the nose, then the face next to it, finishing each face as I moved along. Never before had I experienced such an ecstatic sensation. It was as though every atom of mind and body flowed as one in a fast moving river of energy.
Fifteen hours later I stepped back from the canvas for my first overall look. I was overwhelmed – all I could exclaim was; “My God, did I do that -?”		  

William Zdinak
1925 - 1993
     


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