Demeter's Dream, new WIP

I don't know what it is about this time of year, but my creative spark always seems to get extinguished. I guess all I feel like doing is hanging out at the pool with the kids and drinking a beer on the patio. Ahhhh summertime :)

I finished the Cosmic Clown, but was still not completely satisfied with her. I need to take a good photo of her, but just haven't yet. I think I forced her when I just was not in the mood to paint. So I took a couple of weeks off. Then a commission came in, and I needed to get back into the swing of things. I hate to start a commission when I am in a creative slump or it ends up being forced too. This coming commission is one where I really need to connect in a heartfelt way so I decided to try a new piece to warm me up. I think it worked, I am feeling the spark light up again.

So I thought I would show you more of the whole progression of this one. She is one of those pieces that I changed a lot as I went along. Here is what I have done so far on her:

I still have a lot of details to work out on her, but I will probably start that commission now. Got to do it while I am on a creative roll :). These days I seem to need to grab it while it lasts. The kids have their last day of school today, so things are going to be different around here for awhile. Trying to paint with them around can be interesting at best with them chanting "I'm bored, there's nothing to do" in the background. I end up painting a lot into the wee hours of the night during the summer, which is okay since I don't have to get up at 6 a.m. to get them to school.

When I do finally get "Demeter's Dream" done I will write a little more about her for you. Until then, happy summer (or winter if you are in Australia).

The Cosmic Clown, a slow work in progress

Sometimes when I take a break from painting for a week or so, it is so hard to get back into it. I am not an artist that can just constantly paint and churn out work. I can't seem to just paint to be painting. I have to really be inspired and in my creative zone it seems. Then there is the perfectionist in me that thinks every work needs to be even better than the last one. This gets me into trouble a lot, as it is right now.
I started a new painting last week. I had no real plan with it. Honestly, I had been staring at the amazing work of Nashville artist Danielle Duer and those crazy little inky designs she does. I wanted to play around with some ink and tiny little brushes, and that's about it.
I didn't use a reference model. I usually find some pic of a fashion model and base my girl roughly off of her, but this time I made her up. I just wanted to see what happened. Well, I could not get something I liked. I gessoed and gessoed over her face. I got frustrated over and over with the way she was looking, and yet nothing I did seem to make it better. She kept seeming too masculine and not "pretty enough". This made me really think about what my real goal for the piece really was. Why do I need them to be pretty?
Once I started to think about that the whole idea for the painting came to light, and maybe ideas for future ones too. I got to thinking about expectations laid upon us, and about how we are eternally acting out these expectations. We are truly always acting, even when we are being the most real. The Internet is where we really do our best acting and Facebook seems to be our greatest stage. We present ourselves in a certain way by what we choose to show others.
So I realized this painting is frustrating me because she is reflecting me in so many ways right now. She came completely out of my subconscious and I guess this is what my subconscious wants to express in the now. I want to do a series of paintings that touch upon our many roles. Especially as women, we are expected to play so many roles...nurturer, listener, healer, warrior, provider, maid, sex kitten, the list goes on and on.
I am starting with the Cosmic Clown. In college when I was studying Western Native American cultures I was always struck by the idea of the Sacred Clown. This idea was so very important to cultures like the Lakota and the Hopi. These clowns exposed hypocrisy and arrogance before these behaviors got out of hand. Thus Sacred Clowns were considered spiritual leaders in their tribes, because they helped keep the balance in the community.
So my Cosmic Clown is a Sacred Clown, but maybe a wounded one. One that knows how important her role still is, but also knows that no one seems to care anymore about the part.
I am working really slow on her. It is not a big painting or particularly detailed, I am just having so much trouble finding the energy to finish her. I keep thinking I am going to put her on the unfinished shelf, but for some reason I don't. I know it is still because she is not perfect in my mind. Why can't I get over that expectation? Oh, those nasty expectations.......

New wip and a rant

Haven't posted much this month.  I have been real busy painting and getting ready for this coming weekend's showing and next weekend's juried art show.  I promised you a rant in the title so here goes....
People who complain about art costing too much have no idea the amount of work that goes into being an artist.  I think most people think artists just happily paint for a few hours everyday and that is it.  We also collectively have this idea that to earn lots of money we must be working extremely hard at something we hate.
I wish that all I had to do was paint, but that alone would still take up a big chunk of my time.  Each painting I do takes me anywhere from 12 to 40 hours to complete, depending on size and difficulty.  This is usually spread out over many days, painting anywhere from 3 to 6 hours a day.  Once a painting is complete I have to varnish, wire, and sometimes frame.  Varnishing alone can take me hours to do, as I seem to have bad luck with it and often have to go repaint things I messed up with the varnish.  I do all my own framing and this is by no means easy or quickly done.
The other time consuming aspect of being an artist is the copying of your work, or taking photographs, scanning, etc.  I spend a lot of time photographing my pieces.  I have to do it outside on a good weather day.  This can be challenging at best.  Then I have to edit all my pieces in Photoshop to make them as close to the real work as possible to post online.  All of this can take me anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to do, on just one piece of art.  Next you spend time uploading art to all of your websites where you sell prints, Etsy, Red Bubble, etc.  This can often take up an afternoon.
Next you have making prints, packaging prints, shipping prints, making other things to sell like pendants (this takes up lots of time).  So if you add all this up we are going over 40 hours of work a week. 
Pricing your art is one of the hardest parts of being an artist.  What is it's value?  That is a hard question.  We certainly do not get paid for our time.  Just to make a nice round $10 bucks an hour we would have to sell a $400 painting a week, every week.  Then there is the obscure question of how good is it.  We all have seen artwork that sells for thousands that we wouldn't pay $10 for, and ones that sell for $100 that seem to be worth a lot more.
My pricing is random and somewhat based on how much I am attached to the work, and the size of the piece.  I am usually flexible though, and willing to hear offers of course.
Okay, that is about it for my rant, although I haven't even mentioned the high cost of art supplies.  Most of you reading this are artists too, so I am probably preaching to the choir.  But many of my friends that are not artists, even my own husband, have no idea what I do all day.  Somehow I have to fit in cleaning the house, grocery shopping, and taking care of my kids and myself in all of this.  Oh, and I left out the self-promotion on the internet time....like this blog....there is another few hours a day, just trying to get your work out there and seen (advertising).
Okay, on to my current work in progress.  I have been experimenting with different surfaces.  This one is small because it is a sample that I got from Raymar of one of their polyflax cotton canvas panels.  It is a very nice surface that I will definately try again.  It is also what sparked my rant, because it is only 9x12 inches, but I have already put about 12 hours into painting it and am still not totally done.  Just because it is smaller than many of my other works does not mean it is worth less.  I am also really loving it, it has changed a lot already from this pic I am posting now.

WIP "Deirdre of the Sorrows"

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start working on a Deirdre of the Sorrows. Deirdre is one of the most tragic characters of Pre-Christian Irish Myth. Her story comes from the Ulster cycle and has all the makings of a classic fairy tale, except for a very unhappy ending. I originally just wanted to paint a Celtic goddess that was known for her otherworldly beauty and was drawn to Deirdre. Her story is a little bit like Helen of Troy, a beautiful woman that causes the ruin of kings and warriors, but the symbolism of the story is so rich I couldn't resist painting it.
There are many versions of this story, at least 5 plays and 4 books have been written about her, and although the stories vary slightly, the basic theme is the same. So Deirdre is born to a royal storyteller in the court of the king Conchobar. A Druid priest prophesied when she was born that she would be the ruin of the king and the kingdom because of her great beauty. She was almost put to death for this, but the king was so intrigued by her future beauty that he decided to keep her alive and marry her when she grew up. He placed her in foster care hidden away from others.
Here is where the story starts to intrigue me. She lives in a house hidden under the ground (faerie dwelling=sidhe) and is mainly cared for by an old woman named Leabharcham. Leabharcham is the wise crone goddess and/or possibly a high priestess of the old ways. One day Deirdre looks out and sees her foster father slaughtering a young calf during the winter as there is snow on the ground. This in itself is strange because in the old faerie lore you did not slaughter animals after the Blood moon in late October or early November. Any animal or grain harvested after this time belonged to the Fay or the dead ancestors and would harm the living if they partook of it.
So Deirdre looks out at the scene and sees a raven come and start to nibble at the blood on the snow. Most people would see this as some kind of dark omen, but Deirdre sees her future lover and proclaims that she would like to have a lover like that with hair the color of a raven, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow. At this point one might be reminded of Snow White, and one should be. The white as snow, red as blood or rubies, and black as the raven is like a code in fairy tales. White, red, and black are the colors of the Dark goddess and of the Faerie realm. I think that Deirdre is claiming her lover to be the goddess, or rather stating her love for the goddess here.
So the symbolism has laid the hints. Deirdre is in the faerie realm. She is between and betwixt the worlds, just like Snow White was when she entered the dark forest and met the gnomes (or dwarfs if you want to call them that). She soon meets this raven haired pale skinned Marilyn Mansion looking lover named Naoise. She runs away with him and lives in some forest in Scotland for awhile and lives blissfully happy there for a moment.
Eventually they have to return to Ireland. In a nutshell, Conchobar succeeds in having Naoise killed, marries Deirdre but she is miserable and kills herself. In one account she knocks her head on a boulder as her carriage is passing it. So what is the meaning of all this tragedy? Like most myth, the meaning is multi-layered, but one meaning seems to come out at me. I think in part, this story is about the old matriarchal Bronze age goddess societies being taken over by the more Patriarchal warrior ones. I think it is trying to warn people that the way of war and Patriarchy is a road only to greed and ruin.
Deirdre is the sovereign goddess in this tale, as at that time a king was still not truly a king unless he was married to the sovereign goddess. She was the living representative of the goddess and the Earth or the land. If we are too greedy with her, if we take advantage of her, she will perish and so will our kingdoms.
Okay, so now on to my painting. It is a lot of pressure to try and paint a face that would cause the downfall of so many men. Hopefully I captured her beauty and otherworldliness here:












You can see the pencil workings of a raven that will be carrying a serpent shaped golden torque. In some accounts of the story Deirdre has a dream right before Naoise is killed of hundreds of ravens flying with bloody torques in their mouths. I think this is a strong symbol for the story as a whole. Gold and white are similar in their symbolic meaning, and I am painting the torque (which was worn around warriors necks) in the oroborus style to again symbolize the goddess.

As always, I hope to have this finished this week....we will see. I am leaving you with a photo of me in the Underworld of Faerie (or better known as Cathedral Caverns in Northern Alabama) surrounded by the energy of gnomes.

WIP "The Gifting"

I had this plan to do the three fates of Greek mythology one at a time. I was going to start with Clotho, the fate that holds the distaff and begins the weaving of the fate of each human. I am intrigued by the fates, and other web/weaving goddesses like Ariadne. They are often connected to the stars and spiders. Also the word faerie is derived from the Latin fata, or fate. It has been speculated by many that actual faeries were "people" with the gift of second sight, or the ability to see the future.
I wanted to do my Clotho in a very modern way or another one of my "pop surrealistic" goddesses. I started to work on the pencil sketch on a larger size (for me) 24x36 canvas.



I struggled with her face a little more than usual. Something about her really bothered me. I decided to give her my bangs for some reason. I almost think she looked too much like me and that was what was bothering me. I erased her face more than a few times and finally decided to just let it go and she would evolve once I started painting.



I sometimes do my sketches with a water soluble graphite pencil that does not need to be fixed before you add the acrylic paint. It ends up just blending away with the paint. For this painting I used regular old graphite and sprayed it with a fixative before I painted. I thought I wanted to leave a lot of the graphite lines showing, but now I am wishing I would have put a light coat of white gesso over it to dim the pencil lines a little; you live and you learn I guess. Here she is with an added hand:



I have drawn a barn owl in the background that I planned to be bringing her the beginning of the thread. I wanted it to be as if she was chosen by nature to have the gift of sight. As I am looking more and more at it though, I am thinking about making the thread that the owl is holding a snake instead. I guess I haven't quite gotten over my snake obsession yet. Here she is with some background color:



I finally started to like her face and her general look. I am not really sure if she is still Clotho, maybe just an ambiguous woman being gifted by the Otherworld. I still feel for some reason there is more of me in her than normal.



This is the last photo I took of her. I have since added a delicate off the shoulder blouse on her. I hardly ever dress my girls so I thought I would play around with some fabric. I need lots of practice with fabric folds. I am excited about this one now, I wasn't at first. Funny how your work can evolve sometimes into more than you expected when the idea was first birthed.

Tiamat-finished

Well, at least I think I am done with her. I worked and worked on her, and changed elements on it over and over. I think I am fairly happy with how she turned out, but my self critic was out in full force with this one towards the end.

I wanted to go into some of the symbolism and my reasoning on this one. Tiamat is usually drawn as a three headed dragon, but I wanted to do this with my own impressions on the myth, and not rely on what I could read in Wikipedia. In the Sumerian myth the generation of creator gods that Tiamat is a part of is referred to as the "Ancient Ones". I believe that these Ancient Ones might have been another race, maybe like the Elven or an Elder race. A less fanciful idea is that they were a matriarchal people that were overtaken by a more warrior-like Patriarchal people. Again the passage that inspired the piece:
"Know that Tiamat seeks ever to rise to the stars, and when the upper is united with the lower, then a New Age will come to the Earth, and the Serpent shall be made whole again, and the waters will be as One."
I believe that this passage is talking a lot about humans having the ability to walk in both worlds, or uniting the spiritual and the material parts of ourselves. This is what we are all asked to do right now. I personally find it a very hard task. I seem to swing from one world to the next, and can not remain in both at once very often.
The stars represent the spiritual, and the lower world is our lower selves, or material selves. Tiamat seeks to rise to the stars, but is held down because the serpent is not one. I represent the serpent in this painting with a coral snake in an ouroboros style. The ouroboros is a well known symbol of the goddess energy. It's mouth represents it's positive active energy, and it's tail represents it's passive negative energy. When it bites it's own tail it is neutralized, it becomes the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I used a coral snake here because they are venomous. When it reaches it's tail it will be one, and neutralized. The masculine aggressive energy neutralized by the feminine.
There are many myths all over the world of an ancient race of wise people known as Serpents or Dragons. I believe this is why Tiamat was called a Dragon, she was part of these ancient wise people that possibly disappeared when the Patriarchal societies took over. Also, the ley lines that run under the earth are often referred to as Dragons. We must be able to converse with these Dragons under the ground and with the stars above to bring on the New Age. Many of those myths that talk about the ancient wise serpent people talk about them retreating underground, like in the myths of the Tuatha de Danann. So maybe they are or were physical beings that went "underground", or maybe they are the Dragon energy that runs through the arteries of our great Gaia. It is something I ponder a lot.
In the painting behind Tiamat's masculine side is a pair of ducks. Ducks represent an energy that lives in water, on land, and in the sky. They are showing us how to walk in both worlds. On her feminine side there is lost of plants and Earth energy. It is the energy of the Earth that helps us connect to the Feminine energy needed to neutralize our abundance of material energy.
Tiamat has three eyes instead of three heads here I suppose. The third eye of course is an Eastern symbol for obtaining inner vision and wisdom. The mist surrounding her represents the veil that surrounds us all and keeps us from seeing beyond the physical world. She is also rising up out of the ocean, or the unconscious. This is what the goddess has been doing for sometime now, rising out of the depths of our unconscious. Tiamat is one of the most ancient goddesses known. When she has fully risen out of our collective unconscious, a New Age will truly be upon us.

Tiamat WIP

I was totally struck by a quote from the ancient Sumerian myth and decided to paint Tiamat. She is the creatrix goddess of the Sumerian cylce. She is connected to serpents and dragons and was killed by her own grandson Marduk. Possibly this is another myth symbolizing the matriarchy being destroyed by the patriarchy, but like most ancient myth, the symbolism is multi-layered. Here is the quote that I couldn't get out of my head:
"Know that Tiamat seeks ever to rise to the stars, and when the upper is united with the lower, then a New Age will come to the Earth, and the Serpent shall be made whole again, and the waters will be as One."
I will go more into my interpretation of that when I have completed Tiamat, but for now I will just post my WIP pics. You will get to see how nuerotic I can be with my backgrounds with this progression.



The above image shows my graphite underdrawing. It is just a rough sketch and the painting usually morphs into something a little different looking than the sketch.



Here I have started to give her a little color and decided to go with black hair again.



More color added. I was thinking I wanted a drippy background here, but was really feeling unsatisfied with it. Basically, at this step, I had no idea what to do with the background. I like to paint the women sort of realistic with a lot of detail and make them the main focus. I like my backgrounds to be more abstract, but I never really know exactly how they will turn out. It is a lot of trial and error.



At this stage I decided to forget the drip, and go with a solid dark blue background.



At this stage I added some kind of circle thingys with drips. I am not sure really why except they look kind of cool. I will come up with some esoteric meaning later maybe. I do plan to paint yet another snake around her in an ouroboros style. I guess the circles will reflect that. I am feeling the power of this goddess and having a great time working on her. Hopefully I will have her done and posted by the end of this week.

Quetzalcoatl, WIP

I started a new painting this weekend and was progressing pretty quickly on her,and then got a cold today. I don't have a lot of energy to paint on her today so I thought I would post a WIP. She is a little bigger than my usual, 24x30, and I think I really like this size!

The first image is of my pencil sketch on the canvas. I do a pretty rough sketch just to know where everything is going to be. I was having a pretty hard time deciding where her back was going and if I should add butterflies or not. I erased a whole bunch at this stage.

Here she is with some color added. I have decided to change the way I had her orientated in the sketch and to get rid of the butterflies for now. I might add some at the end, but now I am thinking some kind of blackbirds flying in the distance added at the end.

Here is what she looks like right now. I have most of the elements painted in, and a whole lot of detailing to do and trying to de-sloppify some sloppy elements. I can be pretty impatient when I first start a painting. I want to get everything on the canvas quickly so I can get an idea of what it will look like. Then I go back and detail and fix my mistakes.
I am pretty happy with her so far. I know I am because I keep staring at her. Sometimes they just really captivate me, and that is when I know I am doing something right.
I am calling her Quetzalcoatl after the Mayan feathered serpent god. I will go into that more when I post the final painting. I am just really enjoying painting snakes lately. I also think the Slyvia Ji influence is even stronger in this work. I am just completely taken with her work. I know this painting has my own touch, but it is highly influenced by her amazing work.
Hopefully I will have this done within a week or two, but right now I think I just need to lay down. I worked at my daughter's preschool two days in a row last week, I am sure that is where I picked up this cold...dang it :)

Fragile, WIP

This is the latest piece. I am thinking it will be called "Fragile", or "I Feel Fragile Today". The above pic shows her with the graphite sketch and the first touches of color. I am painting her to symbolize what I think a lot of people are feeling right now. We are submersed in a bunch of Pisces energy right now, culminating during the next new moon when many planets including the Sun will be in Pisces. We are all feeling fragile and extra sensitive right now. We are also going through a major transition right now and trying to realign our systems to anchor in this new energy.
The butterflies are a symbol for this transition and they are going through her in a sense without her even realizing it. She is also submersed in water to her waist to symbolize the emotions of Pisces. Here is what she is looking like with a bit more color.



I need to work on a commission now and won't be able to finish her for a few days. That is going to be incredibly hard for me, but she will just have to wait.

I have not been keeping this blog very up to date. I keep forgetting about it; guess I am not the best blogger around. Sometimes I feel like I have so many thoughts in my head it would just take too much time to blog about it. Well anyway, here is the latest completed piece "Jezebel".



I rather like the way she turned out. Jezebel had about the worst treatment of a woman in the Bible and one of the most horiffic deaths. Basically she was flung out of a window and left to be torn apart by wild dogs. Recent archeaological finds have proven that she was a very powerful woman in the ancient world (as it seems that in the Bible the word whore is a code word for "really powerful woman"). Also her name was most likely not Jezebel but this was a corrupted spelling of her real name, I mean who would name their daughter whore of god in the first place. We probably will never know the truth of who Jezebel was as her story was written by her murderers as they were trying to justify their killing of a woman.
I wanted to paint Jezebel in honor of all women who have been born to be the ones that we could blame.
I must have listened to Iron and Wine's Jezebel about a thousand times while I painted this. I really do feel like a painting can take on the vibration of the music you listen to while painting.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghBJhGIcneU

Dragonfly WIP

This is a very rough sketch to the piece I am currently working on. I am almost done with her now and she looks a little different than this sketch, but this gives you a rough idea as to what she will look like. I am working on refining my style. Being the Libra that I am, my art often reflects my indecisiveness. Sometimes I only want to do highly spiritual, symbolic, and mystical art and other times I just want to paint big eyed girlies. I am noticing that the artists that I am the most drawn to all fall under the catagory of Pop Surrealism. I like the idea of slightly distorting reality, and focussing on our vanity and messed up self-image constructs.
A friend of mine showed me this link It is for a Digital Retouch website that shows before and after shots of all the models. It is amazing how much they do to give us a false view of what beauty is. I guess that is what I want to explore. How beauty can be seen in the absurd and how we can easily distort our vision of beauty.
I think even the big eyed girlies can be spiritual art. With my work it is the eyes that convey the story of each soul I paint. They look back at you and hopefully speak to you. At least that is what I hope they do. Anyway, that is what I am wanting to paint for now. I could change my mind tomorrow.

Pearl, complete

Here is the completed "Pearl", and I guess she is my last completed piece for 2009. I am thinking a lot about how far my art has come along this year. I feel like 2010 will be an even bigger year for me and my art. I plan to do more fairs and hopefully some exhibitions. I am pretty excited for what is to come. I think 2010 will be a year for many to burst with new creative energy. Now, if I could just get the energy to start my new exercise plan.

Happy Solstice and what's going on around here...

Well I have been extra busy getting ready for the holiday like everyone else. I haven't had a whole lot of time to paint, but am very slowly working on a piece called "Pearl". I started it after reading a little about the life of Mata Hari. I am so intrigued by the women of the early 20th century and this piece is a result of that fascination. Here is a couple of pics of what I have done so far.



The above picture is the rough sketch that I first did in graphite. I have been doing this lately and find that I really like drawing on canvas with graphite. I like being able to draw the piece before I paint it. This next picture is with the first bit of color added.



I am going out of town for Christmas and won't be able to finish her until I get back, which will be pretty hard for me to do. I like to start a piece and go at it until I get it finished.

I have had a pretty good week this week as far as my art goes. Earlier this week my work "The Seer" was featured on the Red Bubble homepage. I have been on Red Bubble for a year now and this is only the third time I have been on the homepage. It doesn't happen a lot, but I am always very excited when it does. Here is what it looked like:



Also, I just found out today that I will be showing at a local coffee shop called Common Grounds starting January 9th for two months. I am really excited about this. I have been a little shy about trying to show my work at locals places. This is my first baby step to breaking out in the local scene, so wish me luck!

I hope you all have a wonderful Winter Solstice today and many blessings for a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic 2010!

The Seer

A 22x24 acrylic on canvas. This is the second in a small series I am doing on the different levels on the spiritual path. This is the Seer. She has begun the process of connecting to her spiritual gifts. She is now eternally walking "between the worlds". This means she has delved into her subconscious mind and has brought light into the darkness. The subconscious mind is represented by the Underworld here and the color red. There is a thin veil, or mist between the two worlds and the doorway in between seems to be her own mind.

The Peacock feather rests at her third eye. Obviously the peacock feather represents the third eye, but it also carries on the theme of alchemy presented with the Seeker. All of the different metals are represented in the peacock feather and it also looks very much like the core of a crystal. Peacocks are also a symbol for transmutation. At this stage on the path the Seer is a trans muter like the peacock. She is constantly transmuting negative energies around her even if she doesn't realize it. Though the Seer is presented with many gifts and can see into worlds others can not, this is the hardest step along the path. She is constantly tested and always teetering on the edge of self-confidence and doubt. She has to find her center point constantly to stay afloat.

Red-winged blackbirds fly out of the Underworld and all around her. Black and Red along with yellow and white are archetypal colors for Mother Earth and the Underworld of creation. According to Ted Andrews in "Animal Speak" the red-winged blackbird's colors connect it to the level known as Binah on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. This is the level associated with the Dark Mother and the primal feminine energies. In a sense, the Seer is releasing these energies into creation. She is the bridge between the worlds that can help these energies return to the Earth.

The Seeker, finished

This is the "The Seeker" finished. The seeker represents the beginning step of the initiate as she steps onto the path of ascension. She wears the hermetic symbol the Seal of Light over her third eye region. This symbol alone represents the totality of our initiation into a state of perfection. The circle represents all energy and the ultimate expression of unity in the Cosmos. The square represents the crystallization of energy into definite form and the idea of perfect harmony. The trinity is shown by the triangle. Finally, the inner circle represents eternity.

At a deeper level of initiation however the three geometric solids equate to the alchemical solutions of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. These represent not only chemicals but the spiritual and invisible principles of Soul, Spirit and Body and the three lights, Stellar Fire, Solar Fire and Lunar Fire. To those in possession of 'the key' this symbol, or cipher, is thought to reveal the 'alchemical' formula for discovering Man's essence and transmuting him in stages into a state of perfection - a reflection of God (definition of hermetic seal from http://cosmiccipher.blogspot.com/2006/10/symbols-ciphers-divine-proportion.html).

She wears this symbol, and yet she has not seen it yet. It guides her from her third eye, but she is not consciously aware of it yet. Behind her is a forest that she seems to have just came out of, and yet behind her is the direction she needs to proceed. The two giant egg shapes represent her own hidden potential. The bird and the feather are representations of gifts from spirit that will help guide her along the path.

She is excited to begin the journey, but she is not quite aware of the gifts she possesses. She is the seeker, much like the fool in tarot. The hermetic seal is also repeated in the way the two trees form a square, along with her own triangular shape, and the circle of her face. In a sense, this potential of transmutation is always with us, and all around us.

I really enjoyed experimenting with this piece. I had so much fun with the drip effect. It is definitely a process of letting go for me and letting it just happen. I am looking forward to working more with this technique.

The Seeker, a Work in Progress

Okay, so I have decided to set up a blog for the first time. I thought I would make my first posting about the current work in progress. It is an acrylic painting that is 22x28. I am pretty excited about this one. It is almost finished, but I still need to clean up some details on it. I plan to do a whole series of similar paintings that all deal with different aspects of my own spiritual journey. I will write up a longer posting when I am done with it to explain some of the meanings and symbols. I would love to hear any feedback and or suggestions you might have.