Guess I am a bit focused on dragons these days. In fairness, the connection predates our pandemic. But not by much … in some mythical place maybe the dragon showed up with a mission …. born at the right time. The Yellow Dragon, in Chinese mythology, is an earth deity. Protection and good fortune. And that’s a good start.
Tracking the course of these recent lock-down paintings, when Charlotte empty street Angels morphed into Dragons, I finally began to connect the dots … to understand how these powerful archetypes are working on me. The angel symbolizes our linkage with God energy, of course. But not in that limp, woe-is-me sort of way, gripped by fear and crying ‘oh, help me, I’m so powerless’. No way …. not as I read the texts.
If you believe, you can do these things I do and even greater.
Enter the Dragon (and Chinese …. interesting accident). He expresses what is best in all of us — what is brave and smart and creative and compassionate. When he showed up in my studio, with the recent work on “Garden,” I felt he represented our separation from the earth. Now, even more than that, he stands steadfast in contrast to Wetiko — a mind virus that separates us from each other. Superficially, as social distancing. Symbolically as mask wearing. And systemically, as zero sum, material thinking …. disunity on a global scale.
He sees the Spiritual everywhere translucent in the material world, and he does not want to escape the responsibility of being a Dragon.
I don’t think the dragon phase is quite finished. Hell, with one painting on the easel upstairs, another on the easel downstairs, and a third on the drawing table in layout …. evidently not. It’s such a great force to work with in threshold times. For these last few weeks all I could do was paint these images …. not even really understanding the story they were telling. I couldn’t write about it, or even talk about it. I just dreamed and painted, and dreamed and painted … knowing in my heart that things are not what they seem.
