ARTIST CATHY WARD: IN LONDON, THE PSYCHIC, SOULFUL MESSAGES OF “THE ORACLES”

ONCE AGAIN, A PAINTER REVELS IN THE THERAPEUTIC REWARDS OF ART-MAKING

by Edward M. Gómez

The American poet, essayist, memoir writer, and civil-rights activist Maya Angelou (1928-2014), speaking about the nature of human life — about each and every person’s journey through life — once told an interviewer, “We’re all in process.”

Speaking about herself but also about any member of the human family’s situation or circumstances at any given time, she noted, “This, too, will change. This will change. This cannot remain the same. I’m in process, so I do the best I can.”

Cathy Ward, “The Oracle of Transformative Inner Energies,” 2024, ink and watercolor on paper, 23.25 x 33.25 inches (58.5 x 84 centimeters). Photo courtesy of the artist

If that kind of thinking, which fundamentally recognizes the impermanent nature of existence, sounds like a page right out of a manual of Buddhist philosophy, it’s also an outlook with which many an artist who has found himself or herself facing big challenges, from paying the rent to physical- or mental-health issues, may be instinctively familiar. Many — most? — artists are not trust-fund kids who are just role-playing in a field to which they really have very little to contribute.