At World's End: An Emerging Artist's Beginning

About the Show

"At World's End" is Kelly Coquerel's first Solo Art Show exhibiting a mix of her paintings and drawings. It will be a family friendly event in downtown Smyrna that is Free to attend with light refreshments and snacks provided.

Why "At World's End"?

“Suppose I ask a different kind of question: If against our wishes and hopes, we are stuck with mortality, does mortality grant a beauty and grandeur all its own? Even though we struggle and howl against the brief flash of our lives, might we find something majestic in that brevity? Could there be a preciousness and value to existence stemming from the very fact of its temporary duration? And I think of the night-blooming cereus, a plant that looks like a leathery weed most of the year. But for one night each summer its flower opens to reveal silky white petals, which encircle yellow lacelike threads, and another whole flower like a tiny sea anemone within the outer flower. By morning, the flower has shriveled. One night of the year, as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe.”

A passage from The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman

This is the passage that inspired me to paint Cereus Night Bloom, and it also inspired the theme of my first art show: At World’s End. We have such a short time on this planet compared to the vastness of time itself; a mere speck on the timeline of eternity. Yet it’s precious and beautiful. For each individual, that period is all there is. If it weren’t for the knowledge that our existence is limited, would our desire to experience life be the same? Would we strive to learn all we could and spend our days working toward our life’s goals if we thought it would never end? Even with this knowledge, though, we seem to spend our days preoccupied with things that don’t matter. We are focused on material things, possessions, our jobs, competition, etc. and in the scheme of our lifetime, these things do not ultimately satisfy us. As we approach the end of our lives, we begin to see more clearly what truly matters. The very idea of finality gives us motivation to strive for more. I’ve listed here the top five regrets of the dying from the book by Bonnie Ware:

1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”

4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

This year, my grandmother passed. It was the first funeral I had ever attended, and it was truly a surreal experience for me. Although her spirit had already left her body, I could still sense she was in the room with us. In my conversations with God, I’ve come to learn that those who have passed from this world physically can still return to us in spirit. The mere thought of them draws them to us in an instant. They are not lost to us forever. On the contrary, they are nearer to us and even more part of us because they are not bound by their physical human form. It makes us sad when they leave because we do not understand that they are still close. Our focus is on the physical world because we have forgotten who we are in spirit. We are not a body with a spirit trapped inside; we are a spirit borrowing a body for a season. And as a spirit, there really is no end. Our lives touch so many other lives, and through us, others’ lives are affected by people we’ve connected with, and ultimately, we are all connected to each other throughout time in this way. “No man is an island”, as the poet John Donne has said. By merely six degrees of separation, our life in some part goes on. And really, this world, this life, has no end.

My show highlights the idea of an “End” because I want us to critically ask ourselves what’s important and why can’t we live that now. There’s a beauty about the “end” of things: it reveals what’s important and it marks a new beginning. We should redefine the concept of “The End”. Instead of seeing it as the finality of something, we should see it as a transition or a new opportunity. With that said, the title of my Art Show carries some irony because we know life, our spirit, goes on and the world goes on. Let’s enjoy it before the next transition. Let’s be good stewards of what we’ve been given in this life.