Initiation
The Initiate’s life has brought her to a point where she is confronted with her future destiny. She has come from a school of Spiritual knowledge, indicated by the being she is communicating with, a luminous figure right in front of her. The Teacher’s influence lives in her but she will take the path up the mountain on her own. As one who has passed through the gates reserved only for those who are called Initiates.
For awhile now I have been dreaming of doing some oil painting and so I finally began some paintings a few weeks ago. This is the first one that I feel is close to finished. It has been a challenge trying to use this new medium. Like learning to do karate when I have only done Tai Chi before. I began painting with a single idea in mind and as I painted I discarded some of the first superficial images that arrived until I came to this image. There are many layers of paint, but it is not the same as watercolor “veil” painting as it feels more sculptural as the actual painting pigments are so much more dense and thick. The “I” is the angel attempting to awaken the personality who is sleeping in the light of the white mountains. The cold of the ice has kept him mental and in hibernation. There is someone who is even more asleep than the white figure though and this is the form of “Essence” who is not really sleeping, but completely submerged in the black lake of the subconscious. She has a deep warmth within her and when she begins to manifest and awakens will be a sword of heat and strength, cutting through the veil of shadows and with the help of the white Knight the two working together will be able to walk in “reality”.
The Angels wings encircle the two higher being bodies of refined feeling and higher mind. The angel would be the representation of the “I”, as in when “I AM”. The two figures can be Big Brother and Little Sister. Husband and Wife. Teacher and Student. Knowledge and Substance. Personality and Essence. OR any other allegory that brings out the Esoteric truth of these two forces that must be reconciled in order for the angel to appear and bring everything into alignment.
This is a felted tapestry that was needle felted on silk and then wet felted. The landscape is right near my house and my children and I take our walks down this little tractor road. I liked the shadows and the fall hues and tried to make the image bright and rich in color. We picked bowls and bowls of luscious blackberries and baskets of walnuts from the bushes and trees beyond the two trees in the middle of the picture, this fall. This is the road to Switzerland as well. You can walk another half a mile and suddenly you pass into Rodersdorf, Switzerland. Sometimes we have had to walk from the tram in Switzerland to our house in France along this tiny route with corn on one side and fields of wheat on the other and horse riders as well as the occasional dog walker. One never knows if one should say “bonjour” or “Grutzi”.
I have three children, all under the age of six, so it is only natural that I am obsessed with the image of mothers and their children. Before Christmas I started a series of paintings of the Madonna and Child and this is one of the pictures that came from that work. How does a mother hold her infant? What are the feelings? The thoughts? The sensations that arise from the cradling of a beautiful new soul? I tried to pull this information out of the ephemeral world into the physical reality of this painting.
Seven years ago I found myself in a foreign land and trapped in my “castle” so to speak. I was unable to communicate with my neighbors as I spoke only a few words of French and I no longer was working (I had been a Kindergarten and then a Class Teacher) so I started felting in my free time, which suddenly I had lots of. Over the years I always “felt” that felting was a craft and that it was not serious art. Over the past years I have felted on and off, sometimes going a year or more without picking up wool and needle, other times spending hours a day poking away. Recently after a big move I started felting again after I opened up the boxes with all my crafty materials. I told myself that it was only a “bridge” period until my new paints arrived and I could start “doing” some “real” art. Well I am painting now and have been for a few years, but I keep coming back to felting and now I am seeing that felting can be just as beautiful, subtle and artistic as its brother and sister art forms.
The felting of sea life as shown above was done recently ( October 2011) and was one of the first tapestries I did using a few touches of embroidery. I had lots of fun making the octopus and tried to start from color relationships first and then brought the images out of this rich background. If you wish to see more of my felts check out my Etsy store!
This simple painting started as just a rainbow color wheel and it developed into a landscape with a Princess and a baby. The baby is a holy child as he has a halo gleaming around his head, but could be any child as aren’t all children born holy?
