Emergent
Digitally painted enhancement of original watercolor, 2021
This self-portrait began as a watercolor painting and was finished on an iPad Pro using ProCreate.
This contemporary portrait includes imagery of ideas and events that have shaped who I am. For example, regarding the flower: One afternoon as I sat with the sun shining warmly on the top of my head, I daydreamed that a flower sprouted there and grew up into the sky. This "mind flower" was one of many that I imagined towering over the landscape, waving in the breeze, and visited by giant bumblebees that transferred ideas and feelings from one mind-flower to another the way real bees cross-pollinate real flowers. Other imagery in this artwork includes: a creek sacred to me, a pond where I spent childhood summers that allowed only rowboats, the ocean, decades of depression, my affinity for fire, connection to the earth and especially trees, a recent experience of seeing a person's entire life reduced to a few items in a cardboard box, and the symbolism of the moon as it relates to the concept of the Divine Feminine.
Enough
Digital painting, 2021
This still-life was painted from life using an iPad Pro; it was started in Art Set 4 and finished in ProCreate.
Temple Of Venus
Digital painting, 2021
This artwork was created on an iPad Pro using Art Set 4 with only one brush (palette knife).
This painting boldly seeks to depict the body of a mature and substantial woman as beautiful and worthy. Although fit and trim for more than half of my lifetime, aging and weight gain not lost from pregnancies and depression in the last third of my life has changed this body I inhabit. These changes contributed to the experience of a feeling of lessening, disappearance, invisibility, and shame in a culture that worships the nubile female body. Books by Jean M. Aeul imagine a matriarchal culture where the body of a mature woman, with pendulous breasts and well-fed cushioning curves is the ideal. In that culture, the more closely a woman approximates the deity of "The Great Earth Mother," the more attractive she is and whatever status she has from her maternal ties is heightened. Here is such a body rendered in some of my favorite colors. Can you imagine a grocery shopping experience where a larger mature woman's body is noticed and openly admired and the nubile young woman dismissed by all but the most immature of observers?
Jetsam
Digital painting, 2021
This artwork was created on an iPad Pro using HEAVYPAINT.
Jetsam /jetsəm/ noun: unwanted material or goods that have been thrown overboard from a ship and washed ashore, especially material that has been discarded to lighten the vessel.
This discarded apple is about to hit the shore. The apple has been used to symbolize many and varied things, including: joy, good luck, knowledge, fertility, sexuality, and love. They are a traditional gift to a teacher, a ward against illness, and something to juxtapose against an opposite (apples vs. oranges). More darkly, the apple has also become a metaphor for bad luck, deception, sin, and the forbidden. Some literal symbolism has apples representing particular parts of the female anatomy, whereas figuratively, the apple can stand in for an individual woman, all women collectively, the danger of the archetypal Temptress, or even the oppression of women in patriarchal societies. Here I wonder what apples shall be discarded to lighten our journey? When? Why? How long until they reach their final resting place?
The Crone
Digital painting, 2020
This artwork was created on an iPad Pro using Art Set 4.
In this artwork, an old, dried, wrinkled apple perches on an elongated wooden bowl, like a wizened old woman in a boat or on a precipice. The Crone is an archetypal figure and the third aspect of the neopagan Triple Goddess, the Maiden and the Mother being the other two. With these two other aspects, the Crone is part of the circle of life. Here she is raised up from the mundane and ready to come into her own with the wisdom of her years, the power that comes from it, and the freedom to live as she sees fit.
Tree Of Life—Maiden, Mother, Crone
Watercolor, 2019
Here the three aspects of the neopagan Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother, Crone) dance around the tree of life while a sacred fire gives rise to the earth.
This image was painted overtop a grid of color swatches I had painted on the first page of a new sketchbook made with a beautifully tooled leather cover and filled with thick handmade paper. I was very frustrated and disappointed with how unpleasing this group of swatches was to the eye. And because it was the first page, I was not content to let it be and dislike it anew each time I used the book, so I decided to create a design over the swatches, a design which became a mandala, which became the canopy of the tree, which wanted to be danced around and to become part of a mystical scene.
Those swatches now contribute to the stained glass effect of the canopy, the smoke of the fire and the mystery under the tree. Partway through its creation, I realized the central star was not just a geometric shape but that it could be the sun. This meant that the phases of the moon, which surrounded it, ought to face the sun properly. This adjustment required that I carefully cut out each sphere, rotate it, and reaffix it into place. That this was done is undetectable unless you know what to look for and search it out. Its success adds to and reinforces the symbolism of this artwork: Beauty and meaning can be made out of whatever you have to start with as long as one is persistent. Change is an essential part of the circle of life and the continuing creation of the world. This painting is currently my favorite among all my artworks.
Earth Mother
Watercolor, 2019
This original painting celebrates the archetypal figure of the earth mother in brilliant spheres of color. The spheres around her body give a defined stained glass effect whereas those within her body softly overlap and merge. Her hands, feet, and forehead glow with a soft warm light as she exchanges and cycles energy with the living earth, releasing it through the palms, feet, and third eye. Spheres of color remind the viewer of the locations of chakras. Meanwhile, an adorable frog clings to one foot as a seedling sprouts from a fingertip. The moon peeks over one shoulder.
Temptation
Digitally painted enhancement of original watercolor, 2020
This artwork was created on an iPad Pro using ProCreate and a photograph of the original watercolor painting.
This watercolor was created in response to the 2020 Inktober prompt: Fish, and as part of my An Apple A Day project, for which I create a daily artwork featuring an apple. So the question was, how to link a fish and an apple? I imagined a giant angler fish whose glowing lure recalls the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. It is presented to a mermaid Eve as her Adam looks to her for her decision. She is surprised, fascinated, and a little afraid as the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and she has a feeling of being watched.
Five Birds
Digital painting, 2021
This artwork was created on an iPad Pro; it was started in Art Set 4 and finished in ProCreate.
This fantastical image includes depictions of three female nudes, one of which reaches back with a claw to grasp a sphere, one with a leg extended upward, and one towering over the rest. Other imagery includes a barren tree, flame, the moon, five birds, and an apple. A sense of majesty and warmth contrast with brittleness and uncertainty in colors that recall space nebulae.
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