The Divine Feminine

Through age of reason, the scientific revolution, and the dominance of the patriarchy, an active suppression of the divine feminine has been in practice, particularly in industrialized societies. Feminine, in this context, being not specifically female but related to those characteristics that are connected to emotion, spirituality, imagination, intuition, nature, interconnectedness, and non-linear cycles, for men, women and gender non-binary.

I am aware of the vast extent of trauma that humanity has been accumulating over centuries, through wars, disease, and natural disasters, through family discord, prejudices, and abuses between people. Much of this has not been grieved, and as a result we have slipped into various ways of suppressing the pain, that has contributed to treating our planet as a commodity. I thought of the great mourning that needs to happen and began to visualize the tears as restorative and leading to a re-greening the earth.
​Much of what I believe needs to change going forward, is intimately tied to needing to bring back the divine feminine and finding a way to integrate this wisely with the current masculine energy. I realize that the suppression of these characteristics has created a loss of balance, an over emphasis on logic, science, structure, individualism, separateness, and the linear, with humans placing themselves as the hierarchical top of world order. 
The subject of these paintings evolved, to become focused on an exploration of how to bring back the divine feminine, to acknowledge the impact of our loss of her attributes and the value they have to offer for a way forward in the world.

Sacred Geometry

In this series, I am attempting to explore number and shape and their often-forgotten connection with the sacred. By sacred, I mean connected to a higher consciousness, and that which is greater than our selves. Number and shape are much more than simply quantitative measures. Shapes draw us in as organizers of chaos and complexity, providing patterns of harmony and order that attempt to make useful that which is difficult to comprehend in life. Nature is full of patterns and geometry, and man replicates this in his own creations. Every number/shape has a different impact on our own consciousness and can be a tool to move us towards greater self-awareness

 Nothing and Everything #0

The ancients did not consider zero to be a number but it came to denote potentiality, the point from which all other numbers emerge, rippling outward. It is that which is nothing but contains everything. It symbolizes wholeness.
Its mathematical acceptance allowed the representation of ideas that have no form (i.e., no verifiable concept or geometric form), and with the age of reason, our separation from the knowledge that consciousness (ideas/thoughts/emotions) forms all physical reality.

The Dyad #2

Two is the birth of separateness, dividing into opposites, a polarity. It brings forth a rhythmic oscillation between two opposing forces, that creates life, a vitality, the yin and the yang. For anything to manifest in form there must first be a polarity, a here and there, a now and then, and a you and me.

The Circle of Life #1

Oneness is typically represented by a circle, equally expanding in all directions, from nowhere, from its dimensionless centre to the infinite points around the circumference. Life begins and ends in continuous cycles, from birth to death to re-birth, arising from the invisible oneness and eventually returning to it.

Triunity #3

One and two are the parents, three is the beginning of many, the firstborn of the sequence. It breaks through the boundary of the binary. At the same time, it brings completion, the balancing third perspective, creating a new unity through the relationship with 1 and 2, a wholeness. It creates the first geometric shape, the triangle which is fundamental to the structural strength of the universe. 

Great Mother Earth #4

The square canvas is the beginning, fair and square, a solid base, but it is with this fourth point that we begin to have volume, and 4 represents Mother Earth  (and matter), with her elements, air, water, fire and earth, and the four directions.

A Quilt of Humanity #6

Six is about structure, order and function. A hexagon is a statement about the relationship of the circumference of a circle and its radius, each side being equal to its radius. It is a shape with efficiency of space, perfectly fitting together. Here I am showing structures of society, of age, race, culture, fitting together to make a cohesive blanket of humanity full of unique individuals.

A Star is Born #5

The Pentad represents the next level, the birth of life, and the 5-pointed star is a universal symbol of excellence. There is a geometry of regeneration within the shape in which each arm of the star can be made into another perfect star, coiling into a spiral that leads us towards the light. We grow towards our own centre, our own centred Self.

Apollo's Harmony #7

Seven has always been associated with mysticism and ceremony. Apollo was the Olympian god of harmony with his seven stringed lyre. Here each circle extends the previous diameter by one third, creating musical “fourth” notes. Each circle represents the seven colours of the rainbow as light separates into a sevenfold pattern of energy.

Repetition and Renewal #8

The base tile pattern is the “Breath of the Compassionate”. The eight points, point outwards and alternate with folding inwards, symbolizing the cosmic inhalation and exhalation. The shapes tessellate or fit into one another, just as it is said that Divine Compassion fills the universe with no gaps.
The spider with its eight legs and eight eyes is a manifestation of eight in the natural world. She is the spinner of matter and the threads of fate, for humans and the entire cosmos. She is fertile with many offspring, connecting to the “promiscuity” of the number eight having many divisors. 
The two faces that make up her body, one male, one female, look outward to our external experiences of the world, which resonate with our inner experience, and by being aware of this we can transform ourselves, and rise to the eighth step of spiritual elevation.

The Complete Family #10

Ten is a portrait of the whole family of number archetypes and represents perfection, symbolizing fulfillment and new beginnings. The Kabbalah contains ten “potencies” that generate the universe, by which the Divine manifests as visible form. Atop the Kabbalah is the Tetraktys, a system of ten points from the Pythagorean school where each level represents the four elements descending into greater density.

The Horizon #9

Nine is the greatest single digit number, at the edge of the limitless ocean of numbers that will repeat in endless cycles. Nine is rare in nature, however, in each fertilized egg at the beginning of mitosis, the centriole moves to the edge of the cell, and each centriole has a circle of nine parallel tubes. From a nine pointed X we can create the mythic labyrinth, a single route that weaves rhythmically into the centre and back out into the world.

Dividing Space and Time #12

Underneath is a map of an imaginal realm, with 12 provinces divided as in old, by the astrological constellations, each with its own centre of governance. Each part has its own strengths and archetypal personality, representing each month of the year, such that when they come together, make a more complex whole. A heavenly whole represented by the dodecahedron. A King/Queen rule, a leadership that combines the Mythic Masculine and Divine Feminine.
A clock is ticking, it’s close to midnight, we need to change our current divisive ways soon.

Harmony of Moon and Earth

Squaring the circle is when the circumference of the circle approximates the perimeter of a square. A mathematically impossible task to define. The difference in the radii of the “squared” circle and the circle contained exactly within the square creates the radius of a small outer circle, the moon. The ratio of this “moon” to the inner circle, the “earth”, is the ratio of the actual size of the moon to the earth. The earth is contained in a solid, physically grounding square and the moon is circling in the heavens, representing the harmony between our physical, logical nature and our emotional, imaginal nature.

Metatron's Cube

Metatron’s cube is known to contain all the five platonic solids, it is an image of potential, containing all the structural elements that are required for the universe.
It was important for me to paint this moving from an image of death to birth, upwards, with Metatron’s cube in the centre to represent that potential in the in between space. The death image was “painted” in reverse by lifting the dark pigment, to find light/life. The baby was painted “positively”, emerging from the cube.
​

Pi 3.1415926...​

The ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter, pi, is an infinite number corresponding to the infinite points represented by the circle. Here it is represented by correlations between an integer and a colour, and spirally manifested to over three hundred decimal places. Within it is contained the image of a woman neatly coifed, a housewife of the 60’s ready to serve a freshly baked, perfectly round pie.

Fibonacci Sequence

The golden triangle demonstrates the Fibonacci sequence where the long and short sides of the triangle are in a Fibonacci ratio, ever repeating to create a spiral. Life unfolds in this spiral, from the developing embryo of all vertebrates, to the leaves on the stem of a plant.