ASTRAL PROJECTING Print

ASTRAL PROJECTING OIL PAINTING 31 x 19 inch I started painting this artwork in 1996 as a student and returned to it in 2021. This painting is about philosophical reflections on how our mentality affects our material existence. We live surrounded by thoughts, dreams, desires.Our goals are like stars far away and our life is a road to the cherished. ‘Who will in book of fairest Nature know’. Who will in fairest book of Nature know How virtue may best lodged in beauty be, Let him but learn of love to read in thee, Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show. There shall he find all vices’ overthrow, Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly; That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so … Beauty is meant to lead us to virtue, according to Renaissance ideas of virtue. Anyone who wants to know where in nature you can observe beauty and virtue together should look at Stella, for the lines of her figure reveal what true virtue and decency are. But then, in the final line, we get a classic Sidney twist: into this Edenic world of beauty and virtue, Desire (personified, and suggesting lust and baser drives) is heard to cry out for satisfaction: ‘Give me some food.’ Philip Sidney