Phoenix Dance
Phoenix Dance
The Persistence of Symbols of Rebirth
Phoenix is the comeback kid of mythology. Phoenix is the rebirth and resurrection bird of persistent worship. She lives a thousand years, for a thousand years she soars and sails, she surfs, on streams of cool clear air. After an eon of living, her clock runs down, and then she fulfills her destiny to crash and burn. From the purification of fire, from the ashes of her own autocremation the Phoenix is reborn to soar another thousand years.
Lets face it y'all, life is hard. Sometimes it seems that all is lost. Failure and exhaustion, are universally a part of human existence. It is a wheel, a roller coaster, an enlightening adventure. Success and joy, failure and defeat.
The wheel of Fortuna turns round and round. We go up and we go down. We all know, there will be change, sunshine; before a driving rain. Light and dark, day and night, Our spirit, engaged will take a flight.
When we crash and burn, we NEED to see the phoenix at the end of the tunnel. Hope keeps us going. Hope is the sperm of rebirth. DNA is in the egg and the egg is in the DNA.
At the bottom swing on the wheel of Fortuna cycle, we may be crushed or we may tap into rebirth. Mind, body and spirit are resurrected with the will to soar. The ashes of defeat contain the diamonds of a comeback.
Phoenix analogies, regeneration myths are found in all cultures, world wide. Universally cosmologies offer a resurrection from the ashes of failure story. Russians, Native Americans, Turks, Pacific Islanders, Tibetans and Japanese offer regeneration mythologies. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus also mines the human need for reinvention.
The emblem of the Phoenix has been used frequently in literature and movies. Ex: " Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Drug rehab facilities are named Phoenix, because even Lindsey Lohan may grab the reins of the marvelous Phoenix and rise to a pristine palace of potential. Technologies and rockets are named for the bird of rebirth. The rocket is in our soul, keep hope.
Universally throughout history, there is a cavernous human longing for the hope of rebirth. The persistence of resurrection myths demonstrate the persistence of the human need for a comeback.
The Making of Phoenix Flying Dance
I finished this digital image today. I am excited to see how the print will turn out. I would like to further develop the image into an oil painting. I can not promise you that this will be created, because I have a lot of images in the pipeline. Paintings are circling in my head like helicopters over Louis Armstrong airport after Katrina. (Yea, I know, I used this metaphor already, but I like it enough for repetition.)
For reference, I harvested the ballet dancer image from the web. In the tossing of the dancer image from web site to search engine, and all around the world, for forty times or more, the name of the exquisite dancer and the name of the master photographer, who captured her flying leap, frozen gracefully for all time in midair, have been, regretfully, lost. Thus, it is called an orphan image.
I changed the low rez web picture digitally. It has been totally painted in Photoshop. Colors, lines, shapes, all have been interpreted. If anyone can supply me with the names of the artists who created the image, I will be grateful to know and publish the contributors names. If the artists object to the mess that I have made of their beautiful creation, then I will destroy the pictures.
Nothing is created in a vacuum. Artists do not just pull a full blown creation out of the isolated personal cerebrosphere. Inspiration comes from imagination, from experience, from nature, and especially from the creations of other artists. Each artist interprets, creates, art from the soup of all that is. There is a current of development flowing through all work. Artist have been borrowing from each other since the second fertility goddess was carved with stone from stone. And, there is persistent cross fertilization between the various artistic disciplines. How blessed we are, to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Before digital painting, before web images, I scoured galleries, art museums, and books, with hungry eyes. I now delight in the banquet of beauty and inspiration that I find so easily on my computer. (But will never replace the nirvana of seeing an actual paint and canvas masterpiece.) Artistic options, like the options of most other endeavors, have been expanded by the flickering pixils museum in a box. Just as the new technology of photography fired the imagination of the impressionists, giving them the theory of broken light/broken color, in the latter decades of the 1800's, current technologies fire the creative edge of art today.
