Here's the big version of my nest study. Nest I.
Nest II coming up.
My sister has been appointed as Marketing Director. Her birthday is on International Women's Day (not a prerequisite, but still). I had to explain the genesis of the nest theme.
I said, "Hmm, I just liked that nest rock."
This one.
But nests are incredibly symbolic. I say "I just like painting what I feel like painting. It's like accessing the subconscious/unconscious world. Sometimes I don't understand a painting until years later." Like this one.
Acrylic on hardboard, currently covering the breaker-box by the kitchen stove.
I did this oh...1999? Right after travelling to England, where I met a woman named Trish who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I did this as a "healing painting" to help her change and transform (spiderweb/butterfly...) and overcome her illness. Waaay back then, I didn't have technology, so I took a photograph and mailed it to her in the post. (She did recover, and got married.)
Later, I changed the face in the painting (it had been a portrait) to a more stylized "everywoman" face. Later still, I wondered why the windows are so dark, both the house and fence are so monochromatic, the pickets almost look like bars, and the colourful garden is outside the fence.
If I were to analyze it now, with the clarity of years, I'd say "the little house with the picket fence" represented a restrictive life/body/mindset that needed shaking up. The woman is actually pointing to a spider, hidden in the foliage, a classic agent of the creation/destruction process (continually weaving webs that are continually destroyed).
So the moral is, don't squish spiders.
And Yay for International Women's Day. Gratitude for living in a place where we have freedom to be, evolve, express, create, transform etc. etc. and just be ourselves. And cheers to men, who also have to evolve, express, create and transform themselves. We are all in this together, becoming more human in the best sense.
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