The Bridge and the Fox

I made some good progress on "The Bridge" this weekend. I am actually really happy with her so far. I am working on the wee lil' fox in it right now and having the best time. I really need to explore painting more animals. I have been almost obsessed with birds for so long, it is time to open up to more animal energy.
Fox really wanted to be in this painting. I have been seeing foxes all over the place for weeks now. Fox is not really a totem energy I have worked with much before, but it makes so much sense why she is showing up now. I originally placed fox here because she is one of the animals associated with the Faerie realm, because she is seen only at dawn and dusk. These are the times "in between" when the doors to the Faerie realm are open. But fox's connections with camouflage, shapeshifting and invisibility are quite interesting too.
All of these abilities are associated with feminine magic. According to Ted Andrews in his book "Animal Speak", there are 21 species of fox. 21 is The World card in tarot. Andrews states that this reflects that the world is "growing and shapeshifting itself into new patterns that will be beneficial".
Ancient Chinese and Native American lore both tell of beautiful maidens that can shapeshift into a fox and can be the downfall of men that fall in love with them. Again from Andrews: "This is very symbolic of the idea of magic being born within the feminine energies, and that unless a male can recognize the magic of the feminine-in himself or others-and learn to use it to shapeshift his own life, it will ultimately lead to destruction." Well that just about sums up the idea behind most of my paintings, and now I see more clearly why fox wanted to be in this one.
Here is a little peak at my lil' fox friend:




I am going to start painting the hare soon, and will try to post a little about her symbolism when I do.

New WIP and one that will never be

I usually like to finish any work I start, but lately that hasn't been the case. I use to just be able to crank out work even if I didn't feel overly in love with it as I was working on it. It seems now I have to be completely in love with what I am doing or I lose interest.
I have started two faeries over the past few weeks and have gotten more than halfway done and then got bored. Who knows, maybe someday I will finish them. I also tried to do a self portrait. I have been reading the Harry Potter series to the kids and I am completely jealous of all those wizards and their pet owls. I decided to do a portrait of me with a pet owl (and really long hair). This is as far as I got.

I did it on a scrappy piece of watercolor paper, and when I started to paint on it I suddenly remembered I hate painting on watercolor paper. The paint just dries way too fast and never looks very vibrant to me. There are a few watercolorists that can achieve vibrant color on paper, but it seems I will never be one of them. So it looks like I will never finish my owl and me.
I have started one I think I will finish though. This one will be called "The Bridge". It has to do with becoming a bridge between the worlds. The work includes a fox and hare, two animals that are only seen in the in-between times of Dawn and Dusk and are thought to lead people into the Faerie realm.

Sacred Familiar Interview

The Sacred Familiar newsletter "Within The Grove" came out today and I am very honored to be featured in it. Julia Inglis does such a wonderful job and puts a lot of hard work into writing this. Please checkout her site at www.sacredfamiliar.com



You can read the entire interview here.

Updates and good news

I always love the energy in October leading up to Samhain. I got married ten years ago on a Friday the 13th (Freyja's day) in October. I have always thought it is one of the most magical times of the year. It has been feeling especially magical for me lately.
Maybe it was the Aries full moon in Scorpio, but I am feeling the energy of the Divine Masculine. It is an energy that says "it is time to go out and make things happen". It is the energy of the Magician card, the uncovering of your personal power so you can manifest your desires in the physical world.
So here is some of the magical things that have happened just in the last week. Firstly, my work is being published right now in a book called "Angels and Goddesses". I should be receiving my copy any day and I am very excited to get it, to see my work alongside about 30 other talented artists and photographers.



Next, I have found a partner to manifest something I have dreamed about for awhile now. It is still in it's preconception phase so I won't say much about it, but it has to do with tarot (hint, hint :).

Then just yesterday I found out that I have been selected to show my artwork at next year's Divina et Femina IV. This is an international conference held in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. The keynote speaker this year will be Z. Budapest. I am over the moon about this. There will be lectures, artists, writers, all about the Divine Feminine. I am a little worried about how I am going to make it there, but it is not until the end of May, so I will try my best to make it happen.

My final great news has to do with a fabulous newsletter that will be highlighting my artwork later this week. It is a newsletter out of Australia called "The Sacred Familiar". It is a remarkable newsletter put out by Julia Inglis and Tony Esta. They run a school for the intuitive arts. I can not say enough about this beautiful newsletter. It is full of good insights, and great art. They have highlighted my talented friend Patricia Ariel a few times also. Please check them out at www.sacredfamiliar.com and sign up for the newsletter.

I hope you are all enjoying the wonders of this time of year. Happy Halloween/Samhain!

WIP "Deirdre of the Sorrows"

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start working on a Deirdre of the Sorrows. Deirdre is one of the most tragic characters of Pre-Christian Irish Myth. Her story comes from the Ulster cycle and has all the makings of a classic fairy tale, except for a very unhappy ending. I originally just wanted to paint a Celtic goddess that was known for her otherworldly beauty and was drawn to Deirdre. Her story is a little bit like Helen of Troy, a beautiful woman that causes the ruin of kings and warriors, but the symbolism of the story is so rich I couldn't resist painting it.
There are many versions of this story, at least 5 plays and 4 books have been written about her, and although the stories vary slightly, the basic theme is the same. So Deirdre is born to a royal storyteller in the court of the king Conchobar. A Druid priest prophesied when she was born that she would be the ruin of the king and the kingdom because of her great beauty. She was almost put to death for this, but the king was so intrigued by her future beauty that he decided to keep her alive and marry her when she grew up. He placed her in foster care hidden away from others.
Here is where the story starts to intrigue me. She lives in a house hidden under the ground (faerie dwelling=sidhe) and is mainly cared for by an old woman named Leabharcham. Leabharcham is the wise crone goddess and/or possibly a high priestess of the old ways. One day Deirdre looks out and sees her foster father slaughtering a young calf during the winter as there is snow on the ground. This in itself is strange because in the old faerie lore you did not slaughter animals after the Blood moon in late October or early November. Any animal or grain harvested after this time belonged to the Fay or the dead ancestors and would harm the living if they partook of it.
So Deirdre looks out at the scene and sees a raven come and start to nibble at the blood on the snow. Most people would see this as some kind of dark omen, but Deirdre sees her future lover and proclaims that she would like to have a lover like that with hair the color of a raven, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow. At this point one might be reminded of Snow White, and one should be. The white as snow, red as blood or rubies, and black as the raven is like a code in fairy tales. White, red, and black are the colors of the Dark goddess and of the Faerie realm. I think that Deirdre is claiming her lover to be the goddess, or rather stating her love for the goddess here.
So the symbolism has laid the hints. Deirdre is in the faerie realm. She is between and betwixt the worlds, just like Snow White was when she entered the dark forest and met the gnomes (or dwarfs if you want to call them that). She soon meets this raven haired pale skinned Marilyn Mansion looking lover named Naoise. She runs away with him and lives in some forest in Scotland for awhile and lives blissfully happy there for a moment.
Eventually they have to return to Ireland. In a nutshell, Conchobar succeeds in having Naoise killed, marries Deirdre but she is miserable and kills herself. In one account she knocks her head on a boulder as her carriage is passing it. So what is the meaning of all this tragedy? Like most myth, the meaning is multi-layered, but one meaning seems to come out at me. I think in part, this story is about the old matriarchal Bronze age goddess societies being taken over by the more Patriarchal warrior ones. I think it is trying to warn people that the way of war and Patriarchy is a road only to greed and ruin.
Deirdre is the sovereign goddess in this tale, as at that time a king was still not truly a king unless he was married to the sovereign goddess. She was the living representative of the goddess and the Earth or the land. If we are too greedy with her, if we take advantage of her, she will perish and so will our kingdoms.
Okay, so now on to my painting. It is a lot of pressure to try and paint a face that would cause the downfall of so many men. Hopefully I captured her beauty and otherworldliness here:












You can see the pencil workings of a raven that will be carrying a serpent shaped golden torque. In some accounts of the story Deirdre has a dream right before Naoise is killed of hundreds of ravens flying with bloody torques in their mouths. I think this is a strong symbol for the story as a whole. Gold and white are similar in their symbolic meaning, and I am painting the torque (which was worn around warriors necks) in the oroborus style to again symbolize the goddess.

As always, I hope to have this finished this week....we will see. I am leaving you with a photo of me in the Underworld of Faerie (or better known as Cathedral Caverns in Northern Alabama) surrounded by the energy of gnomes.

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.

The Guardians, new WIP

Well the summer is almost over and I have felt uninspired most of the time. I had to paint a couple of paintings for upcoming themed exhibits. One was for the Tomato Art Festival in East Nashville on August 14th and the other was for a traveling exhibit called "The Womanly Art" that is being put on by the Southern Indiana La Leche League. Although I was very excited to paint both of these, my inspiration was slow to come, and both works took me longer than I had originally planned. Both works are finished now and posted on my redbubble profile.
I have had another work in my mind for weeks now. I had to wait to start her until I was finished with the before mentioned works. That was slightly hard for me. This painting began to permeate my every thought. I think I learned a lesson in patience though. I felt like I let the idea grow for awhile in my womb before I finally got to birth her, and I think the work is better because of this.
The piece is about the shift of consciousness that we are all going through right now. The energy is shifting all around us, whether we realize it or not. This work carries along the themes of "I Feel Fragile Today". The energies are going through us and we feel uncomfortable because we feel we are changing, but we don't really know what is happening to us. In this work I am trying to show that it is our connection to nature that will help guide us through this change.
The Guardians is a large 2x3 foot acrylic on canvas. Here she is in the early sketch phase.


And here is a detail of her face.


Here she is with the face coming to life and a bit of color in the background.


And then I worked her face some more. This is what she looks like right now.


I started painting her yesterday and was up way too late working on her. I am feeling like I am in complete painting bliss with her. I have a lot of detail to do on her that might take me a few weeks and I have a couple of trips coming up to see family. My kids start school again, already, in about 2 weeks. My time to paint is going to really open up then. I feel the Fall will bring lots of creations.