Transformation Painting

In many cultures around the world the image of the goddess was used to represent her powers of love, fertility, life and death, connection, embodiment, destructiveness and seductiveness. She was mainly associated with earthly powers and the human body. As a woman who identifies herself as an artist, lover, mystic, healer and everyday goddess, my identity and values have been important in making the image and power of the goddess the focus of my oil paintings. My Shibari performances, oil paintings and photos are how I visually express her amazing light and dark aspects and communicate my beliefs about her iconic image. Through my understanding of her, I believe the human body, life on earth and sex are sacred. In my painting "Metamorphosis" the goddess figure represents the transformational power as both giver and taker of life that suggests all things must change. The message in "Metamorphosis" is goddess is change and change is eternal. This is one of the many powers of the goddess image. The goddess’s expression in the painting is looking in the distance as if in a trance. Her hand is gently resting on and pointing to her heart – the metaphorical center, our life force energy and the symbol of love. The butterflies are symbolic of the many transitions - psychological births and deaths - we all make from the time we are born to the time we die. The goddess represents our greatest fear of dying and embodied our only hope for living. Rather then giving us the peaceful meditative relief of no mind and no body – the masculine aspect of spiritual practice. The feminine aspect of spiritual practice is about realization and embodiment here on earth - as symbolized by the branches of the tree and her body. The body, including the brain, is all we have when we are born and when health fails, the physical body dies. The question I asked myself is “Do we really die”? These questions about change, transformation, life and death are questions that great mystical traditions have answered through masculine spiritual traditions. My exploration about change is through a feminine perspective – through my own body and life experience. This leads me back to the question “Who am I?” My performance and artworks continue to return me to that profound question and many more that I have been trying to answer my whole life including “Where is the goddess?“ Who is goddess?” “Is she a body? A mind? A thought?”