Beyond the sound of nothing, in the deep mysteries of what had gone before, the picture dissolves before tired eyes and leaves a shadow, ghost-like, on the retina. Was it really there, could something so ephemeral, so transient, really be explained. The pigment, beautiful in itself, transformed by the hand and eye with the casual but exquisite judgement of the maker becomes a live thing, a birthing of myth, a talisman and keepsake with the power to reinvent itself over and over. We cannot know how or why this should be so, staggered as we are by its corporeal reality. It is something to be approached with reverence, with a quiet mind to let the eye drink it in, swelling the heart with its silent music. There is emotion, moving close to tears, an inspired beauty, that arises from the earth and clay of the body to lift the spirit and soar lover limitless fields of inspiration. Bones and flesh are remade, the years fall away and we are truly human and transcendent for the briefest of candle flames in the blue black history of time.