02.02.02| metamorphosis 2

Earlier in the year, during a visit home, I sketched my father who had fallen asleep while reading. He woke before I could draw in his full facial expression— but I do like the manner which the hasty lines translate to his likeness, with the wrinkles in his clothing, the bookmark still in his hand, the book folding back as an open pair of wings—

Since before December, one project consumed a majority of my time: Metamorphosis 2: Diane Becomes Rhiannon: Unstill Life. The title refers to a personal event during the mid-eighties when I attended Drake University. An eccentric friend of mine legally changed her name from Diane to Rhiannon. That same year I took photographs of her dancing at night, barefoot. This allowed me to experiment with contrasts of white light against black shadows.

Diane/Rhiannon seemed always re-inventing herself, shifting from one aspect of her personality to another. At the time I assumed it was in reaction to her ex-boyfriend, my dorm roommate, as if she were teasing him, forcing him into uncomfortable situations. I realize now she didn't know what she wanted out of life; she was fluid, shifting water. Always seeking a new adventure.

This in itself mirrors the stories of the celtic goddess, how she often shifts her shape to either a wild horse, or a white stag in the woods. One story relates how Rhiannon once transformed herself into a female fly to avoid an aggressive god. By accident she fell into a goblet of wine which rested beside a young, dying queen. Weakly, the queen swallows the remainder of the wine. As she dies in her sleep, Rhiannon re-animates the body, assuming a temporal, mortal form-- a cycle of transformations from godess to fly to queen.

12.01.01| metamorphosis
A new painting was completed: metamorphosis/becoming the faun. The main figure is a further transformation of the Harvest series, which in turn were based on the archetype of the Nature God or the Green Man. During Victorian times his image was carved into stone and placed in English gardens or his image was used to decorate support beams in buildings. I found an example on a recent trip to London in the hotel Berner where I stayed. [Click here to view image.]

In his book The Golden Bough, Sir James G. Frazer refers to the image as a rustic Greek diety— or as a Wild Man: a figure bound to harvest celebrations, autumn feasts, instinctual energies. With this in mind, I included five pomegranates at his feet and a golden crescent moon hanging overhead. [The male Nordic moon is an icon I have begun utilizing lately; the Norsemen are among the few people who personified the moon as a male diety.]