ashar

oil on a wooden panel 40x40x5cm
Ashar’s Between Worlds is a luminous meditation on transition and duality. The board is bathed in soft pastel gradients—creating a dreamlike atmosphere that feels suspended between dusk and dawn. A muted white circle with a faint orange-yellow halo on the left suggests a celestial body, perhaps a moon or sun, quietly anchoring the composition.
A vertical line slightly off-centre divides the canvas, subtly marking the threshold between two realms. The left side is airy and ethereal, while the right deepens into a more saturated blue, where faint black marks—resembling obscured or stylized text—hover like whispers or memories. These marks hint at language or meaning just beyond reach, reinforcing the painting’s theme of liminality.

I use oil pastels, oil sticks, markers, scrapers, charcoal, pigment sticks, newspaper, and graphite, as well as gold and silver leaf, to make marks whichever fits the moment. UV protected, signed on the back. The work is on a plywood panel and is ready to hang. No further framing is needed.

Guiding Moon
I stand in a dessert without a single dune
- just flat sand as far as the eye can see,
And high above me: an unreachable Moon,
silently shining its silver on me.

Too distant for me to hear,
- but I know it sings
A soft lullaby about fear,
And sorrow, and broken wings.

So I keep walking, further still,
Through this nothingness of sand,
An emptiness I cannot fill,
I wish for a helping hand.

But there is none, and anyway
A helping hand I couldn't use:
I alone must walk this way,
Stand and win, or fall and lose.

A whisper from above and far
Tells me I'll be home soon;
I need no guiding star -
I have a guiding Moon.
Haley Protega

Ref: 23/02

Location: secret