By Samantha Wortelhock
Original Painting and Giclee Limited Edition Print on Canvas Print Size: 1200mm x 800mm.

Soul Survivor

A child sits with his mother as he looks out to sea. His thoughts fly as
freely as the seagulls he watches and he asks his mother, "What happens
when you die?"

The child's mother looks out to the blue, far stretching sea and answers,
"My love, your soul is born again to fly".

High up above Cape Byron, a flock of seagulls swoop and dive. A thermal
circles them ever higher in a vortex of sheer joy.

One seagull shrieks to his friend "Look at all those surfers down there,
riding the waves. They are suspended in the power of Nature, just like us!
Water and wind in perpetual motion."

Meanwhile out in the sea a surfer feels like he is in Heaven as he paddles
to catch a wave.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, a shark takes the surfer's body and swims
away.

"And where does your soul fly to?" asks the child.

"You fly to wherever your heart takes you, my love. Your thoughts will
carry you to the source of your imagination; a place so loving and safe.
You will feel like you are home. There will be a guiding light and it will look
after you."

While up high goes the surfer's Soul, high up into the sky. He looks down
towards the Lighthouse and feels suddenly safe and loved. A seagull
flights past him and rejoices, "Welcome back to the flock. You won't
need your leg rope any more, you are no longer tethered, you are free to
fly and surf the sky"

"But mummy, my heart is with you", said the child.

"Then, my love, in your dreams you can practice your wings".

While the Soul of our surfer soars high above the Mother and Child, his
arms become wings and he is a seagull.... a true soul of the sky. Heaven
is here, his ocean home, the source of his joy...and here he will fly, in the
heart of his dreams.

As he remembers the time he asked his mother as a child...
What happens when you die?

The Story Behind The Painting
This painting is special, we rank it amongst our finest both in terms of how it has been painted and the strength of its message.

Cape Byron is our chosen landscape with its Tolkien-like hinterland. Off Tallows Beach (the beach upon which swe were married) and at Cosy Corner, a surfer gets fatally attacked by a hammerhead shark. In that instant our human mind is attracted to thoughts of tragedy, yet up in the skies our surfer's soul has been liberated. He joins a flock of seagulls and his arms turn into wings as he understands that the here and now is our Paradise, where we live and where our soul resides is our Heaven and that we are connected with it all, one facet of one whole. The ominous Mount Warning in the distance and the beacon of light of the Byron Lighthouse are symbolic of the connection, too, between the masked polarities of tragedy and bliss and how both sustain us, making us grow.