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 subconscience. 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”.
Big Brother and Little Sister
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.
Felt Landscape on Silk
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”.
Madonna and Child
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.
Felting as Art and Not just Craft
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!
Princess and Baby Veil Painting
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?
The Life of Christ Veil Painting
The life of Christ is here represented by a few important moments. The first image is the birth of the Christ child with his two loving parents gazing at him in his manger bed. The second is the temptation of Christ. He stands on a cliff with the devil goading him to jump off it. The third picture is of Christ on the cross with his mother weeping in the left hand corner as his blood pools around her. When born the baby is close to the heavens. Then he descends to the lowest point in his life when he contemplates the devil’s enticements and experiences real hell on earth and then he is again close to God as he ends his life and returns to the heavenly spheres.
Intersecting Paths Veil Painting
Three figures are on their individual paths. The young woman is at the bottom looking up for guidance and light. The middle aged man is at the top gazing at his spirit self who you can just make out in light yellow facing him. He is carrying a heavy load full of remorse, aches and pains, stress, etc. and is searching for his real essence or spiritual self to join him again. The old man is fully embodied. He has lived a rich life and has no regrets. He looks down at youth who is much closer to his feeling of himself than the man at the top right and he sends down some energy for the eager young woman who is just beginning her way. The old man then heads toward the light. The light that is beckoning him to the other side, to death and the future unknown.
Mother and Son on Bridge Veil Painting
A boy is leading his mother across a bridge. What kind of bridge is this and what does it mean that the child is going first? I thought it was going to be a rainbow when it appeared but when it was finished I realized that perhaps the bridge is an umbilical cord. Then I had to ask why is the boy leading the mother and not the other way around? I had to ponder this for a while until I saw that it is my son who wanted to be born to my husband and I and he is the one who is teaching me new lessons on life. In a way he guided me to go beyond myself and the French medical world to have the only home birth in my town in the past ten years, he is teaching me that I can be a different person than I ever thought possible and can flourish as a mother, he is guiding me to be more loving and much more. So yes it was I that gave him birth but he brings perhaps even greater gifts to me and my life. The bird often symbolizes a soul. This soul is searching for food. He is hungry and the ocean below him surely is teeming with tasty fish. The boy is entering the world of humanity and his soul will find many riches in the life awaiting him. Healthy food, not just for his body but for his soul as well, will be provided by the life he is beginning.
Gnome Veil Paintings
Gnomies are the little people who help the plants grow by feeding the roots and protecting the seeds. They also create and gather treasures under the ground. I don’t really believe in Gnomes as actual physical entities but as the energy of the earth that inspires and cultivates growth. Gnomes are often associated with crystals and gems. Hard stones, cold, beautiful rocks that are formed over hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. The energies that go into the creation of a precious stone and help it along can be called gnome spirits. For the word spirit is not necessarily a clever little being that flits around but also an alchemical transformation of dirt to sand to rock to gem or grape juice to wine. So the earth spirits are simply the alchemical processes that transform dirt into a crystal. Here is a veil painting I have finished called Grandfather Gnome. He has the light of knowledge behind him and gazes at the crystals in front of him as if they are his children.
Here is Wikipedias definition of a gnome:
A gnome ( /noʊm/[1]) is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characteristics have been reinterpreted to suit the needs of various story-tellers, but it is typically said to be a small, humanoid creature that lives underground.
In this veil painting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs I have made the dwarfs more gnome or elemental. Everyone thinks that Snow White is dead for the Queen is brought back her heart by the huntsman, but she is not dead instead she has gone somewhere to experience a transformation with the help of the elemental spirits or gnomes. We think that a rock is dead, but the elementals know better and so they take her into their home in the earth and watch over her, just as they watch the rocks’ transformation. They protect and help her on her transformational journey by feeding and keeping her safe in their cozy home. At the end of the story she is put into a glass coffin, SHE IS CRYSTALLIZED, meaning that she has become something more than she was to start with, and then the Prince comes and with a kiss she is awakened. Of course there is much more to this story and I’m sure that if this Grimm’s Fairy Tale is studied as speaking about alchemy and elemental spirits it would speak to us as adults in a whole different way than what we heard in this tale as children.
