Aris Moore
“There is no scale to suffering. On hot summer days I find myself trying to save every bug that falls into the pool. I stop for turtles and help them cross the road. I have always realized that to an ant struggling in the deep waters of a swimming pool, his life is as important to him as my life is to me. How sad to die while people are splashing about and laughing. When I taught middle school I was also aware that while the upsets of twelve and thirteen year olds may seem trivial, they are not. They are huge to them and in keeping with the time that they have spent on this earth. I know that the pain, struggle and the love of life know no scale.
Remembering this helps me to walk softer, be more aware, pay attention to what I am feeling and to what others may be feeling. This sensitivity is a constant reminder of our oneness. We are all here together, each of us created from the same source. All carrying hope and love and all experiencing suffering in different and similar ways. If we remember this in ourselves, in our houses, in our class rooms, in our offices, in our towns, in our states in our countries on our continents on this planet in our universe we can create a more peaceful life for us all. A simple smile to a passerby, moving an earthworm, from the hot pavement to the cool dirt, letting someone go in traffic, releasing a fly to the outside, allowing ourselves and others to make mistakes. All of these small things will create big change in the world, but while doing so, they will create deep changes in ourselves. What we do for others is a gift to us all.
This drawing is titled Thank you for your song and it encompasses the sentiments from above and gratitude for the gifts we each bring. The song of the cicada high in the trees has always felt like the rising and falling breath of a summer day. Its cadence reminding me that summer days are long and there is no need to rush. When I held a cicada, or watched a lizard a frog or a bumble bee as a child I lost myself. In some way only it existed. It was everything in that moment. We are all interchangeable in a beautiful way that reminds us that the only thing that separates us are the emotions that hold us inside of ourselves. If we can allow those emotions to exist, but see through them, beyond them, we can feel the love of the world that moves through us all and let that current carry us to peace. Peace is always there underneath it all. If I was to wake up in a world with peace it would be slower, quieter and beings would be walking around, looking, helping living, outside of themselves in the wonder of it all.“
Aris Moore is an artist living in a small seaside town in New Hampshire in the United States. Her work is an investigation into the emotions that both separate us and hold us together. She explores the quiet, emotional worlds of imaginary creatures and insects, beings that exist somewhere between the strange and the familiar, the foreign and the deeply human. There is a purity in meeting the gaze of a creature. Unbound by language, it is an exchange that carries no expectation and asks only for presence. Aris seeks to create an interaction that is raw and perhaps more tender than we allow in human connection. One that is silent and does not exist outside of the moment.
“Thank you for your song”, 2025, pencil, colored pencil and pen on paper (21.6x 26.7cm)