Art Spotlight: “The Weight Of Belonging”

There’s a story in this hat, a story that carries dust and wind, sun and silence.

When I painted my cowboy hat with cattle tags, I didn’t set out to make a statement. I was simply following the shape of something familiar, something that had held its place in my mind for a long while. But as the layers of paint built up, I began to see what was truly asking to be seen.

The cattle tags, in their bright, worn colours gathered around the hat like memories. Each one belonging somewhere, once marking life, now quiet and suspended. I realised they weren’t just objects. They were symbols of connection and loss, of labour and love, of identity carried in simple, everyday things.

Perhaps that’s what painting does best, it holds what words can’t say.

In the making of this piece, I felt the weight of belonging not as ownership, but as relationship. To land, to work, to one another.

When the brush moved through the earthy tones of the hat, I thought about those who’ve gone before ~ their hands, their prayers, their persistence. The red dirt roads and paddocks that keep shaping how I see the world. And in that quiet remembering, something settled in me again, a reminder that even in all our wandering, there is still home.

So this is where I leave this piece, hanging quietly on the wall.

A small testimony of place and of people ~ of the unseen threads that keep us tethered, not by force, but by love.

Sometimes, belonging doesn’t arrive with words or declarations, it appears softly, in the ordinary things that hold our days. A hat worn thin by weather. A tag faded by time. A moment of stillness that feels like home.

Let these small symbols remind us: what is ours is not possession, but presence.

Where in your own life do you feel the quiet weight of belonging ~ perhaps this piece of art can prompt in you ~ not because you are held to something, but because you are held by it?

If this piece opens something up in you, please do share your thoughts in the comments or perhaps email me .

With light,

Lisa Raie