This painting was inspired by a photograph that was taken during a Lomilomi training that took place two decades ago. It depicts a particular “lift and fold” move that was once more common in the lomilomi session and is no longer approached except in moments of exceptional immersion in the well-spun flow of the natural order. Everything that can, and cannot, be read into that kind of a moment will justly proclaim how near or far the one contemplating this image is from the advancing edge of the aloha wave in such a moment.
The image shows these two meeting one another in a perfectly achieved peace–the one on the receiving end secure and relaxed in the knowledge that the source of the wave emanates from within himself, and the lomi practitioner focused with similar devotion on her necessary and impartially manifesting skill–and such a move does take great skill–to enrich the human wave by folding it into the deeper, more mysterious, healing wave of aloha.
