Finding Balance and Lilith

Sorry I have been incommunicado for so long around here. I am coming out of a long period of a creative dry spell that coincided with the dog days of summer. I have felt completely disconnected from my spirit and fully immersed in the physical world and the day to day lately. But as the Autumnal Equinox approached I felt the old magic starting to return. I started to paint again and started to feel the presence of Lilith. I have been working on a Lilith painting for a couple of weeks now. Lilith is a powerful ancient goddess energy. I have been working with snake energy for so long now and they have appeared over and over in my work in the last year. It is so connected with the energy of the Divine Feminine, and is what we as women are constantly working with in this present moment. It is about transmutation, and sometimes I feel like I am working overtime transmuting energies.
Women have been told for so long that they can't be too powerful. Often, as we start to finally reach the potential of our own power, we pull back. We have been taught for thousands of years to pull back. When we pull back sometimes we pull back so far we have a hard time finding that power again. Lilith is a huge symbol for this. She was a very powerful woman. She refused to submit to Adam and stood up to him, she spoke and lived her truth. For this, she was turned into a demonic witch by the Patriarchal forces that were in power.
So within the myth is the symbol of how women still today collectively fear becoming too powerful. Look at women in our world with a lot power like Hillary Clinton, Oprah, Nancy Pelosi and look at how they are portrayed by the media. I just gave a bunch of examples of powerful Liberal leaning women, but look at how Sarah Palin is portrayed in the media, and you realize it doesn't matter what her beliefs or political leanings are, a powerful woman is usually slandered repeatedly. This is what we need to transmute. We need to transmute this fear of being too powerful and the fear of what the world will do to us if we step into our place of power.
Last night during the powerful Aries full moon and Equinox, I sat in a circle with some magical sisters and felt the power of this transmutation. It is very important now more than ever for us to be in community and to draw upon each others strengths to help us reach our own potential. I feel more balanced now and aligned with the current energies.
So here is just a little sneak peek of my Lilith's face. I haven't been taking WIP pics this time. I have been so immersed in her I haven't even stopped to take pics. I have tried to capture her allure, her strength, and yet a look of fear that represents that collective fear of our own power. I still have a lot of fine details to work on, but she is getting closer to complete.



Beyond that I have just been running the kids to and from school. I recently showed at the Kentucky Showcase at Awesome Inc. in Lexington. It opened during the last Gallery Hop in town and here is little pic of me at the reception with two of my pieces.



I just cut off a bunch of hair, it was getting pretty long before. Another sign I am letting go of the old and ready for the new that is yet to come. I hope everyone else is feeling the balance return too.

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.

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 :)