The Big Dipper and Two Pines

The Big Dipper and Two Pines

Acrylic on Wood Panel

48 x 24"

2024

For a good three years I struggled with this piece and last year reached a final resolution.  

I worked on this painting throughout my Mother's Final Illness and eventual Death; it has gone through numerous edits and helped me to navigate a Long Passage of Profound Grief.

Several years back I took an Astronomy Course along with the accompanying Lab. I saw my first Celestial Globe, and considered the View of Planet Earth from Deep Space. I think that Celestial Globes are among the Most Beautiful Things That I Have Ever Seen.

Here is Maine, Two White Pines and an Eclipse viewed from Space behind The Big Dipper, a collapsed view to be sure, with a healthy dose of  Artistic License.

Last Summer's Eclipse gave me the information that I needed to wind up the work. 

The three Astrological Symbols at the bottom represent The Sun, The Moon and Chiron, or The Wounded Healer which were all at Nineteen Degrees during the event. 

Numerological Speaking, the Number Nineteen adds up to the Number One and the Beginning of a New Cycle.

As Above So Below (10,000 Things)

This piece was completed over the summer of 2014, after three years of on again-off again effort. I began the project at the University of Southern Maine, in an experimental drawing class...and turned the piece into an assemblage. I started with a collaged drawing on illustration board using tissue, decorative papers and those great bags onions come in... now buried under paint...but there is still the smallest bit of texture visible. I used the red bag because of the associations it conjured, red means "net" in Spanish, the bag is a red mesh, and the Universe is an enormous network of impulse and matter...follow? Does it matter that it is covered? Maybe, but I know it's there. Also buried is an old postal map of China, only a small corner is visible in the upper right.

I mounted the work on a tray that I found in a thrift store in Altadena, California. I extended the painting out onto the tray. The wheels were removed from a broken toy train. There were many false starts and the whole thing nearly wound up in the trash bin. The Chinese characters read "10,000 Things Are as You Wish Them to Be" which is translated into "All is Well" which speaks to me of manifestation. If I wanted to finish the piece by God I could!

So... I kept at it. I am very much invested in the symbolic underpinnings of a a work, and I don't think I could cram in one more item. However, the finished product is very satisfying to me as a kind of allegorical journey through past lives, this life and that which must inevitably follow. I am aware of what might be considered a kind of loony exuberance in my work. Welcome to my world. The photo is by Jay York.