Hands have always fascinated me. When I was younger, my grandmother used to let me play with her hands. Her skin, as I remember it was wrinkly, soft, and baggy. Baggy might seem like a strange word to describe skin, but it was. She would play this game with me. She would pinch my skin and it would go right back into place. Then she would let me pinch her skin and it would form little peaks and valleys. Her skin became like clay that I got to play with and create landscapes. Her skin had also become more translucent, you could see the veins, and they become streams of water flowing into the peaks and valleys I was creating in her hands. Her hands would fascinate me for hours as I sat and moved skin around creating ever-changing images.
As a child, I used to play with my hands. I could use my hands and the way they interlocked together to form shapes and animals. They became puppets and images. I could create hearts, butterflies, churches, the head of a serpent of whatever I wanted to create. I could use my hands and my fingers like artists use other materials. There was nothing limiting my imagination.
As an adult hands have continued to fascinate me. They become one of the vehicles through which we create. We use them to type or write words, which create stories, poetry, prose, and tales which enable us to travel, envision, and dream. Hands sculpt, carve, mold, melt, weave, stitch, and perform a variety of movements, which allow artists to create works of art which flow from their imagination.
Today, hands can literally become works of art. They can be the canvas on which the artist creates images, paintings that transform the hand into a work of art. Perhaps that is why I love the image I selected to go with this reflection. It is more than a hand. It is an expression of one’s imagination. Imagining an image on a canvas that required imagination to even consider as a canvas. May we remember that our lives, our bodies, our being is a canvas through which we create experiences, paint images, and write stories. So this week, be still, pay attention to your hands and use them to express your imagination.