ferox virago~Reimagined for Whatcom Museum's National Call to Artists: Acts of Healing and Repair

"ferox virago" 28"x12" mixed media on stretched canvas and acrylic pen on teabags attached to canvas panel (currently on exhibit for art studio events)

I first read of the Whatcom Museum's Call to Artists, months before the deadline. So many of my paintings deal on one level or another with healing that I thought choosing what to submit would be easy. It wasn't. I did think of two paintings as possibilities to submit, but I also was contemplating the word "acts" as I thought about my paintings. How could I create an "act" of healing, I wondered. One week before the entry deadline, I had the idea. I would adapt, and make prominent, the drawing of ferox virago that I had created during the covid period of lockdown and isolation in early 2020. I made that drawing to represent protection for us, particularly during that time to protect us not only from disease, but also to help us transcend and transform during this time of extreme uncertainty that amplified collective and individual fear. It has symbols of the triangle, spiral, stillness, world spirit, the scarab, the turtle, head of spiral horns, and hooves. (See the blog entry from 2020 for details about the inspiration, creation, and meaning.)

Loving glyphs and cave drawings, I decided to use Golden's Coarse Molding Paste with its sandy texture to suggest a rock-like surface. I painted a foundational color I made to look a bit like pinkish-orange feldspar (is my college Geology class paying off?), thinking I could add blue-green veins as I finished making this look as if it was taken from a cave wall. I played with ideas of what to add to the left of the predominant ferox virago, glyphs I had copied from symbolism books and ancient symbols I could find online, as well as what I had seen in rug and embroidered motifs. Some I made up as I played in my sketchbook. This was grand fun and left me with the delicious problem of having to be selective. I think I would have loved doing a whole wall of these. I drew the glyphs and ferox virago with watercolor crayon and went over these drawings with matte medium to stabilize them. 

My idea of "act of healing" was to draw the image of ferox virago onto a teabag with my pin type black Uni-Posco acrylic pen. I ended up attaching these to a tea-dyed, raw canvas panel with one stitch taken with the teabag string. The idea is that the viewer, for whom the art and the ferox virago image resonates, creates the act of healing by removing one of the drawings from the canvas panel and takes it for themselves to their homes or to pass on to another. 

I finished the art piece late the night before the deadline (took as good of a picture as I could given the poor lighting situation) and submitted the work. On September 1, I participated in Downtown Bellingham Art Walk and gave "ferox virago" a test run. About 10 people took one of the teabag "ferox virago" images home with them. Viewers overall seemed receptive, and we had many rewarding conversations around the art. In addition, one person told me that the act of pulling the stitched piece from the canvas gave her a profound positive feeling. I am grateful for that feedback and all of the feedback I received.

So whether the art is accepted into the show or not, I am most grateful for the inspiration I got to create it. And that came from reading the "Call to Artists" and contemplating the theme.

 

The Spirits Appeared Via Experimental Techniques (Art in the Time of COVID Pandemic)

 Dwelling Spirits 8"x8" (no longer in inventory)

 Keeping the Spirit Alive 8"x8" (no longer in inventory)

And the Spirits Moved Through 8"x8" (no longer in inventory)

 Acrylic on canvas with Posca pen used for drawing details. 

I had this idea of experimenting with using a brayer to apply the first layer of the paintings in this series. I globbed the paint onto the canvas and spread it with the brayer, spraying water to thin the paint in areas and using the brayer to spread that applied water around. I definitely fell in love with the created textures and, perhaps because it happened so fast, I look forward to creating more brayer paintings, using that at different stages of the painting. 

After the first layer was applied, though, I had to sit back and let the paintings each speak to me. And they definitely had their individual voices that eventually came together for a series. With each, I used the PC-1MR, black acrylic Posca pen (0.7mm, pin type application). I just started drawing shapes, circles, lines, following the texture and letting the concentration of paint determine where I added detail. I had no plan when I started--in fact, I was working so close, I had no perspective, either. I just knew that I wanted to honor the textures in the paint that the brayer left behind. 

Because of COVID times, I know that I have had the survival of humans on my mind, that I've wondered if this would bring out the best or the worst in us as we tried to "avoid the plague," as the saying goes. In the early days, some were so hopeful that we would transcend the tendencies we have that are leading us to our extinction, that we would transform ourselves into beings of higher consciousness because we would finally grasp some understanding of our place on this planet. 

But you know, sometimes we can't get out of our own collective way. So that was the spirit that found itself in the lines and concentration of drawings I created on that first layer of paint in each painting. As I look at these finished pieces, it's seeming like our collective house remains to stand, and we move into its recesses, until we are gathered into its most ancient and rawest form, searching for and finding a way to transcend and transform. The spirit sustains and remains individually and collectively.

Still Being~Being Still Series and ferox virago (Art in the time of COVID pandemic)

(no longer in inventory)

Still Being~Being Still 1, 2, 3

Acrylic on canvas w Posca pen, each 9"x6"

During our time of attempting to stay physically healthy during the pandemic by hunkering down in our living spaces, I and so many of my artist friends, found ourselves challenged to find ways to continue creative expression while so many other thoughts and emotions were inhabiting our beings. Finally, after days and perhaps weeks of distraction, I broke through and into my creative expression by getting out my sketchbook and drawing ancient symbols onto the pages. In one of my researches of symbols, I found a Goddess Against Disease*

This goddess, as well as symbols for stillness, world spirit, scarab, spiral, were drawn into the paintings that I was finally able to create. I had originally intended that these marks be suggestions of what might be found in cave drawings, so that the paintings were to give us a sense of place outside the cave with a glimpse of what's inside the cave. It was only later, while looking at the formations of the outsides of the caves, that I realized that these were actually self-portraits--my head and depictions of my being during this time. They reflect my concern for not only humanity across the globe, but also for the thriving of and connectedness of our humanity. 

I had been looking back at expressions of earlier cultures and was placing myself into their connectedness at the same time of trying to stay present to the currents swirling in our world at this time. While ancient cultures expressed their values via cave drawings and rock drawings, in today's culture, we were on social media reaching out to stay connected, sharing our humor, our fears, our bringing of our creative spirits to make sense of how our instability/stability were being exposed. Ultimately, this series is about holding space for connectedness of past to present to future, holding space for contemplation, holding space for being.

*Originally, I gave thanks to the North American tribes who gave us "Unkatahe, Goddess Against Disease" as I used her in my art. Later, I thought it best to create my own symbol for protection. Hence, "ferox virago" Latin, meaning fierce female warrior

I use "female" here as acknowledgement of the Divine feminine, accessible to all, rather than as a delineating reference to gender. ferox virago carries the symbols of the downward pointing triangle, circle, spiral (in beginnings are endings; in endings are beginnings), stillness, world spirit, scarab (eternity), water, and the turtle (longevity, perseverance) as familiar, at the crown, powerful, spiral pronged antlers, all solidly balanced on pointed hooves. I drew her often on subsequent days, drew her on rocks, posted her on social media, imbuing her and she me with sustainable energy of being.

The Squiggle Effect

(no longer in inventory)

5"x5" acrylic on canvas. Playing with a rubber band ball that my cousin made and gave to me, I put paint on it--orange, black, and blue--and rolled it around the canvas. Then I put white on it and rolled it around, covering, in part, some of the previous color marks. Then I decided to have fun with black and brown fine point acrylic markers. In order to create dimension and movement, I worked off of and around some of the previous marks that were partially covered. Making the squiggle lines was so much fun that I had to stop myself before the canvas was completely covered with squiggles. Maybe next time, I won't stop. So stinkin' much fun! And this one can be turned depending upon what forms one wants to be able to see. (This was a paint over of the last painting in the Pictem II series--I was never satisfied with that drawing/painting)

The Maiden of Chi

(no longer in inventory)

24"x18" mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas

Still playing with texture building materials, I used Golden Coarse Molding Paste on this one. I also used sock store display hangers to create the down-pointing triangular shape and that shape to the far right on the bottom of the painting. I also came across fine point acrylic pens that required playing with. This provided the perfect opportunity for me to draw with acrylics, consequently, this painting includes drawings I've been doodling for ages during so many office meetings. The image on the bottom left is one that has been identified in ancient scripts as representing the Maiden of Chi.

I used gold gesso in the background and then decided to also use copper paint and quinacridone nickel/azo gold for in-between the horizontal lines. Of course, all of that makes this painting another that tricks the light for photographing. I am in love with the color combination. More blue-green in future paintings for sure.