Melek Taus

This piece makes me think of  Melek Taus but also a bit of Shiva.  The night I was working on this was just before all the intense tornadoes and storms in Alabama.  I know that Shiva has associations with weather, I'm not sure about Melek Taus.  Some connections here with the Feri Tradition's Blue God.  Also, please see my post on Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. This piece and the one in that post were created from the same source material, but went different directions.  This one has a softer feel and a perhaps is a little more balanced overall.

I struggle with pieces of this nature, because I often want to give the work more detail and make the image I see clearer, but the whole point of this kind of artwork is that it is supposed to be vague on a certain level.  Much digital art is focused on being overly rendered and having every single bit detailed.   This kind of art is meant to imply or evoke the image that the viewer sees. 

When confronted with visual ambiguity, the imagination is forced to fill in the gaps.  Due to that ambiguity, each person that sees the piece gets a different view of it, thus everyone sees their own individual piece of art.  There are of course bits that everyone will acknowledge as an eye or mouth or hair, but the kind of eye or mouth that each person sees subtly changes the overall meaning of the piece.  The vague boundaries between these things opens the piece up to greater interpretations of meaning, expanding the piece beyond being a single image with a single meaning.  Suddenly, out of one piece of art you can get fifty different pieces.  This is no excuse for laziness or poor craftsmanship though.  There ARE images within the piece, but their boundaries have been overlapped and blurred to let greater meaning in.

Part of the joy of this kind of art for me is the discovery.  I will often spend hours developing the image until I uncover its inner core.  With particularly stubborn pieces, I will have to leave and return later to try again.  Sometimes though, it is like breathing: just letting the air in.  The image is already waiting.  I just have to pick up pen, pencil, or mouse and let it happen.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Passage of the Dark Daughter

I begin to understand.

I have found my way.

Without words,

Without reason,

I went blindly inside,

Fingertips feeling through the unending night

And found safe passage to the sky.

I found my way.

Not of this world and all its answers,

Not of sight or of numbers or of phones,

But of the ocean inside my veins.

The pressure of my pain and fear

Burst me like ripe fruit

And open,

My glistening seeds fell into me.

I look back at myself in wonder,

I found my way!

There is nothing you can give me

There is nothing I can hold to.

The way is all that matters now.

I thought it lost to time and torture,

But I followed the waters,

Oh blessed patient waters.

I found my way!

I slip beneath my waves

And into my indigo depths.

I undulate like my heart

And feel only the within.

The endless within.

The quiet dark part of me speaks.

{Digital images manipulated with Photoshop}

Update 05-12-12
Recommended Listening:

Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke
The Circulation of Shadows
from Duality

Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel

This piece represents the presence of your internal personal guiding force within coming forward to say hello, or to make your brain explode with insights, visions, memories, emotions.  This is my recognition and interaction with my internal silent witness.  This piece and the one following in my next post are very similar, but they both took on  distinct visions so I decided to keep them separate.  They were both created from the same source material. 

I've felt this force in my life several times.  Its presence is always overwhelming and energetic.  It always seems to show up when I am writing or drawing...a time when I am not thinking of myself at all, when I am lost in the creative process.  I can sometimes tell it is coming before it shows up.  Like the tide coming in or the Moon growing fuller.

I cannot profess to have had the specific experience of  The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel , but my experiences seem similar.  Regardless, this piece is about that idea and process.  More information may be found at Thelemapedia.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Update: The Great Stone

This is a reworking of an older piece.  The original was mostly just a sketch in an attempt to capture the idea as quickly as possible.  This is more finished than the other, but now that I'm looking at, I'm wondering what kind of painting it would make...or a sculpture.  LOL!  Ah the meanderings of art.  I suspect that a painting would take on a radically different style.  I would also add color.  Hmmm....there may be another post of this in future.

{Digital Images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: That Smile

Here we are with Sheep's clothing and all that.  :-)  Although I often feel we have more to fear from sheep than wolves.  The Devil never shows up with horns, tail, and pitchfork like we imagine.  Not that I'm much into Christian iconography...I see this one more as a trickster.  Coyote.

Yes he is smiling, but if you look beyond him you can make out the aura of a furry beast...not that furry beasts are necessarily bad.  ;-)  However there is an element of danger that you must respect.  Wild beasts are just that, Wild.  If you do not respect the nature of a thing or person or beast, it can very well turn against you.  Then you have no to blame but yourself for ending up between the toothy jowls of some hairy man...uhm...I mean beast.

This is another one of those pieces that was found on the way to a mandala.  Just some fun image mining.

{Digital Images manipulated in Photoshop}

Solve et Coagula: The Grid

The symbol repeated here represents a great deal for me, but the basis of it is the alchemical formula of Solve et Coagula.  Dissolve and Coagulate.  Expansion and Contraction.  Pushing away and Drawing to.  Increase and Decrease.  It is the essence of Duality within the spirit.  The pump of the Heart.  The Rhythm of Sex.  

The single image on its own is kind of my take on the eight pointed star of Chaos Magick.  However it resonates more strongly with Solve et Coagula, but both can be true.  ;-) The longer I have the image around the more I keep finding new meanings attaching themselves to it.  Somehow in my head this is connected with Robert Anton Wilson's and Timothy Leary's views on reality tunnels.  I haven't worked all the bugs out on that one yet so I'll have to get back to you on that.  I suspect this symbol will be with me for awhile and possibly showing up in other works...so there's time. 

This was my desktop for awhile, but it is a little challenging to look at day in and day out.  However, if you enjoy optical effects, make it your desktop and stare at it for awhile and watch what happens.  :-)  Be sure to look at the larger version of this...the jpg thumbnail that blogger created seems to have blurred a bit and upset the contrast of the original image.

{created in Adobe Illustrator}

From the Archives: The Man of Colour

This is what happens when I'm still very connected to an aspect of my personality that has outlived its usefulness: mental dysphoria and emotional dissonance.  This emotional state is very akin to what I was experiencing in the Blue Man drawing, but not quite as much dismay and depression.  That was very active, whereas this piece feels more static and reflective.

This also seems to be the state that precedes an emotional rebirth for me...a shedding of the skin of personality.  It is often a period of confusion as it is difficult many times to tell the difference between what is no longer functional and what needs to stay in my life.  The pull of the new versus the pull of the past.  Tearing apart with me in between.  Although worth it in the long run, during these times I often feel very lost.  This separation, it is the price of the Alchemy of spirit.

{Created in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Nightscape

A little Van Gogh tribute, but also a tribute to nighttime.    The moon has always been a powerful force in my life.  It does govern the tides...and we are made up of a good bit of water.  :-)  In the end, this is mostly just a sketch, but I feel it captures the FEELING of night, which was my goal.

This could be pushed much further, but other projects demand my attention right now.  Another for the "make this better later" pile.  This was done also around the time I discovered the paintbrush goodness in Photoshop. 

{created in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Green Man

Just in time for Summer!  Part of this is me exploring the paintbrush options in Photoshop.  However I've always been attracted to images of the Green Man, but have never explored them much in my own work.  I've always enjoyed the stylized pieces of leafy faces.  I just realized this looks a bit like Grizzly Adams as a Tree Spirit!  :-)

In my personal experiences of the Green man energy it seems as though there is a bit of a connection to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Two opposing masculine forces that dominate opposing ends of the year.  Here is a previous piece I did involving that theme.  I have recently been studying that same relationship through the cycling between Geburah and Chesed in The Kabbalah.

The piece itself is okay, but I feel like it is more of a sketch than anything else.  I'll explore more of this theme / image later.  Perhaps a full figure piece and/or a landscape.
{Created in Photoshop}

From The Archives: Bliss

This is me having an ecstatic moment in my studio.  Sometimes art really does it for me.  Or it could have been that my blood sugar dropped too low...or too high...or something blood sugary.    :-P

This was actually a wonderful feeling of connection to an energy system outside myself.  It was like I had downloaded bliss by accident.  A feeling of boundless energy and happiness and hope.  Sounds pretty cheesy hunh?  It actually felt like flying while I was sitting still.  I have only repeated this feeling a couple of times, usually involving some type of sensory immersion or deprivation with the proper music.  If I could live in this state I would.  It was the best coffee drink I've ever had combined with an orgasm combined with a slight feeling of free fall.  Mind you, none of those things were occuring when this image was being created.

It hasn't happened in a while.  I've never tried to manufacture it...perhaps THERE is a project.  However, I am a little afraid of it because of HOW good it feels.  Hmmm.....note here: light passing through a prism creates rainbows.  I guess the message here would be to work on my clarity.  Mentally clean house.  I guess I'm on the right track then.  That is what I have been doing ALL YEAR.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Interior Life From the Archives: The Well

Here is another piece from the Interior Life set.  At the time I drew this, there were several circumstances in my life that were endangering my emotional well being (no pun intended) and creative capacity.  A couple of other things inform this piece as well: 1) I have always had a fascination / fear of tornadoes and 2) rarely do line drawings of tornadoes embrace the chaos and ferocity of the event.  I tried to capture that here.  If I succeeded, I do not know.  That is decided by your eyes.

My goal with all of the Interior Life pieces was to try and capture the essences of my personal myths.  Moments, feelings, thoughts and their impact on me.  I hope that comes across , if not on the surface, then in the symbolic substructure of the pieces.

{Pen & Ink, Sharpie}

Interior Life From The Archives: The Old Blue Man

This is another from the Interior Life set.  I immediately saw this one bathed in blue.  Actually I kind of imagined him as the comet version of Ego the Living Planet from Marvel Comics.  A big blue head melting in the rays of the sun.  I'm going to have to color this one and update later.  I may recreate it using Photoshop because I need to SEE those blue flames / clouds.  My beard may be long enough soon to use as reference as well!

{Pen & Ink}

Update 012714:

Over at Zombie Bites, this piece was presented in Exhumed and reinvestigated with color in January of 2014.  Check out the Exhumed image here.

Interior Life From the Archives: Sunrise

This one is  part of a set of drawings I did where I was trying to turn parts of my interior life into very specific images.  I suppose it's all interior life art work, but these pieces were created specifically with that in mind.  Most were of a darker bent, but this this waxed very poetic.

{Pen & Ink}