This time I really mean it: Finished Gestating (was the pun intended?)

Still Point: Gestating 36"x36" (no longer in inventory)

It was quite the process, and it took some time once Peggy Zehring pointed out to me that I need to turn the orientation, but I love it now. I just had to darken down below the circles and raise the burn a little into the white. But I love how this is working now. As always, I bow to my teacher/mentor and give thanks for having recognized her when I saw her.

Finally. This is it. Re-working finished

Still Point: Gestating 36"x36"

I think I have finally resolved all of the places in this painting that were nagging at me: "not quite right." I've sat in my rocking chair countless moments, pouring over the painting inch by inch. Right now, it makes me smile. Of course, there is always more time to sit and rock and study, but I think that I'm taking it to Ladyfest this week to get it to an audience--if there is enough room on the gallery walls. 

So in this painting, "Gestating," is the idea that circles represent the female and squares, the male. This is my consciousness moving toward acceptance of the divine feminine and masculine, toward the idea that we gestate both dimensions within ourselves, that we accept that, as we move toward the integration and "the crowning of age" as Marion Woodman calls the spiral toward becoming a crone.

Still Reworking--Still Point:Gestating

So here it is again, after gold-gessoing out the bottom right and upper left and putting in the colors of oil slicks and peacock feathers. Still not finished, though. But my balance problem of leaning to the right is mostly resolved. I hear that the lower left quadrant is not quite working, and frankly, it was troubling me, so I'm relieved that's confirmed. I think I need red there. And I have yet to be successful in completing the top of the gold that runs over the two circles in the middle space. I've painted and repainted that area. The painting is still trying to tell me what goes there. 

Reworked Version Still Point: Gestating

I'm still reworking this painting but feel pretty close to finished. I resolved the split personality that happened when I added green after I'd been working the copper/violet. I think I need to come in with a little more gold in the space above the three circles. But after the red was added, I could feel myself smiling--a smile that started in my toes. That's often how I know a painting is finished or very nearly so. 

Now I just need to learn how to use my new/first digital camera along with the cropping tool. There's always some new technology nipping at my heals. It provides such a challenge.

The Dark and the Light

I've been thinking about the dark and the light and working on the balance and dynamics between the two in my art for many years now. But it seems to be a more intense focus now. Friends wish me light quite often in closing correspondence. And I appreciate that because I understand the spirit of the intention. And I know about blessing into enlightenment and what that means toward spiritual growth. But I have to say that I love the dark. I love the dark.

Not dark alleys, mind you, but the dark places we go to lick wounds, to really explore emotion, to examine events of the past until we experience little deaths and rebirths through that examination. I think of the dark as the positive experience of the womb. It's a nurturing environment. And that's often what I am seeking to depict in my art. What is being nurtured in the dark, moist place we came from? At one time, at the beginning of our being, it was the physical self being nurtured there, but now, at this time of my life, it is the spiritual self that is gestating. And that is where my painting "Still Point: Descending" came from.

Some refer to the dark metaphorically as a place of fear and depression, but for me, it is a comforting place to face my fears. The light can be blinding, can obscure details, as when a person is standing, facing you, but is back-lit so that you cannot discern their facial features, read their demeanor. It hurts, on some level, to look at that person for any amount of time. So don't we really need a balance of the light and of the dark to see what is real and true?

In my paintings, I often surround the forms I am working on with dark. Since I work with textures, I have to make the decision of whether the dark is on top of the texture and the light at the back, or the other way around. And usually, there is a point in the painting where I reverse the main motif because I think of light as swirling around, in and out, and through the environment. But recently, I have been exploring that place where the dark and the light meet. I think of it as a "push/pull" of light and dark. It's been challenging and fun. But the bottom line is that I love the dark, and I'm not giving it up. I'm living to balance it with the light.