Medusa’s Coral

Myth has it that coral was created when Perseus laid down the severed head of Medusa beside the shore of the Red Sea and drops of her blood spilled onto seaweed causing them to harden into coral. With 50% of the world’s coral now bleached and dying, it calls into question if there is a…

Blue Morpho: Transformation in Color

First published: “THE LANGUAGE OF COLOR & LIGHT: The Liminal-exhibition-artists reveal palette & setting secrets!“by Jennifer Gillia Cutshall One day, I took a picture of my wife and cat asleep on our sofa. I showed the photo to my wife, and she said, “If you’re ever looking for inspiration, there it is.” She was right.…

Turquoise Spider Eggs

The Painting Turquoise Spider Eggs utilizes vivid colors and expressionistic brush strokes to explore the autonomous creative impulse while also attempting to create a celebration of Nature and a heightened awareness of the need to preserve our habitat. The result feels dreamlike and somewhat ambiguous, as is our tendency to mystify global threats and blur…

The Dreamer Finds a Blue Flower

One of the first mentions of a blue flower came in the unfinished novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” (1802) by Friedrich von Hardenberg (aka Novalis). In it, the character Heinrich has a dream about a “blue flower” representing desire and unfulfilled love. The “blue flower” became a key symbol of inspiration in Romanticism, which stressed emotion,…

Danaë

All of life appears to be a clashing of opposites. As Heraclitus said, “Every beast is driven to pasture by a blow.” In the story of Danaë, her blow came in the form of being locked up in an underground bronze chamber by her father, King Acrisius, because the oracle of Delphi said his daughter…

Leda and the Swan and The Illuminating Gas

This is the first painting I completed after arriving to Brazil. It bridges a long journey I have taken since first discovering Carl Jung’s writings about alchemy when I was in graduate school. Alchemy was a language I understood from my early studies of Eastern philosophy. The purifying and transformative process of alchemy, i.e., the…

Ariadne’s String

My interested in mythology, the journey of the hero, and particularly of Psyche and Eros eventually brought me to Peter Paul Rubens and his painting titled “The Andrians” (a rendition of Titian’s earlier painting “The Bacchanal of the Andrians”).  Bacchus is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Dionysus, the god of harvest and winemaking. The…

On Creativity

If we think of God as a power, then we can say that creation is Its manifestation. We can also infer that creativity is an essential attribute of that Power. As an expression of that creativity, we exist by our connection to it in the way drops of water are ultimately one with the ocean.…

Carl Jung and Scalar Heart Connection

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens. ~ C.G. Jung[1] Carl G. Jung referred to the higher intelligence of Universal Consciousness when he asked us to “consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams that come true.”[2]  He explained that Infinite Intelligence has other…

Love Dissolves Fear and Worry

Fear, worry, guilt, shame, and low-self esteem are all learned behaviors. They are emotions born from acquired and negative/incorrect thought patterns. Our beliefs arise from the ways our ancestors responded to the challenges of their time. Our parents reinforce those patterns as do our teachers, friends, and culture. What we should be asking ourselves is…