ART SUNDAY - RICHARD BAXTER

“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.” - Welsh Proverb

For Art Sunday today, a painting by South Australian Artist Richard Baxter (born 1966).

This is his painting, “With Roots Above and Branches Below”, for which the artist says the following:

There is a tree, the tree of transmigration, the Asvattha tree everlasting. Its roots are above in the highest, and its branches are here below. Its leaves are sacred songs, and he who knows them knows the Vedas. Its branches spread from earth to Heaven, and the powers of nature give them life. Its buds are the pleasures of the senses. Far down below its roots stretch into the world of men, binding a mortal through selfish actions. Men do not see the changing form of that tree, nor its beginning, nor its end, nor where its roots are. But let the wise see, and with the strong sword of dispassion let him cut this strong rooted tree, and seek the path wherefrom those who go never return. Such a man can say; “I go for refuge to that eternal spirit from whom the stream of creation came at the beginning.”
Bhagavad Gita. Chapter 15, verses 1-4.