The Source of Water

"The Source of Water", is an acrylic on canvas painting completed in October, 2008. Size is 18"x24". The painting is after a painting by John Auguste Dominique Ingres circa 1820. Ingres' painting was after an even earlier painting, I can not remember the resource now, but I may do the research on this later.

In my painting the water goddess is standing in a canyon. A shaft of light streams across the canvas in a diagonal. A waterfall cascades from the upper right of the canvas. The waterfall is impasto paint with some Golden brand mica paint to add a touch of sparkle. The figure is painted with flat paint. From the classic jug on her shoulder pours an eternal stream of water to nourish the earth.

Starting with the jug there is a circle, a metaphor for the earth water cycle. On earth water comes down in rain, flows into streams and lakes, evaporates to clouds and then rains down again. In the painting, starting with the jug, water streams down and connects with the waterfall splash, the circle continues up the waterfall and reconnects with the jug by way of the shaft of light.

Water, sun (fire), earth, air. The basic elements of life on earth. This painting celebrates the life giving purity of water.

Mary at Cajun Camp

Mary dropped by Cajun Camp to deliver some blessings. She is in luck. Boudreaux invited her to share the venison sausage jambalaya steaming on the wood stove.

Virgin in Paris

"Virgin in Paris" I took the photo of the Eiffel from a batoboat on the Seine. The sun had gone down and the Eiffel lights came on, surprising me. Mary was there. Of course, she is everywhere there is beauty and compassionate love. Unfortunately she did not show up in the photo so I had to add her via technomajic.

Mary Queen of Heaven, detail

"Mary, Queen of Heaven", digital painting, 24.1M.

Mary is my muse." This is what I have been saying to myself. Kind of surprised to find myself making images of Mary. These spiritual images. Thinking about spirituality as I work making art. A lot of thinking goes on because a lot of quiet, alone, time goes into making the pictures. Now here I am with a blog, publishing to the web. Feeling vulnerable. What do I say to all these people out in web-land? The pictures are a personal exploration of spirituality.

Religious imagery is trendy in art at this time. There are many motives why people are into religious icons at this time. Irony is often implicit in recent depictions. My images are only slightly ironic.

As this series of Mary evolves, I wonder where is this going? I am so full of ambivalence and uncertainty and somewhat confused. Taking all this confusion into account I must be ker-ray-zee to be trying to communicate my stumbling thought processes to an unknown number of unknown people. But there you have it. Where ever you are, that is where you are. I am just following my muse.

Artist are mining historical religious images and stating that they attatch no spiritual connotations to the pictures. And I think, that is cool. That is a current detatched view with emotional coolness. Sophisticated. Maybe I should be like that. Cool.

But I am not like that.

Do you know that there is an area of the brain that functions as a spiritual processor. We have an anatomical, neurochemical system for spirituality. (There is also an area of the brain for profanity and dirty words.) Spirituality is physically based, similar to cursing, sexual arousal, bonding with infants. Everything that we experience has an internal physical action. Neurochemical actions are produced or repressed with every action, experience, emotion and thought.

The spiritual area of my brain is very active, Has always been an irritating itch that must be scratched. I have been through so many paradigms. Every decade seems to bring another belief system.

Japanese monk haiku, "My dreams are faded now, and I am through with dreaming. But I know the Iris will still keep its gorgeous hue."

Mary Queen of Heaven

Mary Mother of All

"Mary, Mother of All", is an acrylic paint and digital print collage on canvas, 22"x 28". Finished recently. Shown here are the full painting and two detail images.

Mary is my muse. The concept evolved over time. I harvested the iconic Mary image from the web. Created a large photoshop file. I took the smaller images from digital files that I have created over a period of years. Some of the images came from my paintings that I had photographed and reworked digitally. Some of the images came from my personal life photographs that I had worked on in photoshop. Other images I got from Bing web images and repainted digitally.

There are about thirty small images. All were imported to the large file. They were arranged, color adjusted, and fit into the large Mary image. Then the large image was broken into segments that fit the 9"x 11" format of my Epson printer and printed out. The segments were cut into pieces to fit into the final picture. A canvas was prepared with paint and gel mediums. I wanted to indicate a summer sky. Self leveling gel was applied to the canvas to give a slight actual depth between the ground and the collage elements. The segments were fixed to the canvas with gel medium. Gel medium finishes topped off everything. The "sky" is glossy and the central image is matte finished.

Next I photographed the canvas. The photograph was not very good so I again reworked it in photoshop to create a the focused digital file that you see here.