Animals As Inspiration

It is my goal to help inspire you to look at animals in a different light by gazing upon the art and seeing myriad ways these animals can be portrayed, rendered, and celebrated. In doing so, perhaps this will enable you to see yourself in new and refreshing ways. The Animals Divine Tarot showcases divine animals from around the world. By examining the universal nature of the stories and myths about animals found in world pantheons, you will be able to identify the animals as sacred.

Building the bridge between consciousness and unconscious­ness may take time and discipline, much like rehearsing a medita­tive technique. If you have never looked deeply into a painting before, you may need time to learn how to lose yourself in the power of the image. Even now I am still learning how to study images and symbols in a manner that will activate my imagination.

If you remain open to the possibilities of the subtleties at work in the tarot, you can open up vast reservoirs of knowledge. Animals Divine Tarot provides a means to connect with animals and symbols that represent archetypes of the psyche. The connection may be a personal one and each individual will have a different experience with a particular card, depending on how she or he already feels about the animal. Most of the cards flowed easily from my paint­brush and elicited moments of great joy. But there were a few exceptions. I had a hard time working on the Moon card, portray­ing Odin with a wolf, perhaps because the card represents material that lies within the dream state: a place that can reveal our inner potentials as well as house our innermost fears. Using dark hues in my work is not natural for me. The idea of concealing details and inferring dark imagery can be technically challenging and emo­tionally unsettling, depending on the subject matter and context. Yet by pushing myself into uncomfortable visual realms, I freed my creativity further by overcoming my fear of less-familiar mental terrain. This is similar to a function of dreams; they can confront material that may be too difficult to process in our waking state. By facing challenging material and reflecting on dreams and the dream animals that inhabit the unconscious plane, you can become more self-aware and expand your creative potential.

One of the most difficult cards for me to paint was the Page of Pentacles, depicting the sacred monkey Hanuman. For many years, I never really thought about why primates disturbed me. I gradu­ally realized that primates make me feel uncomfortable because they are so humanlike. To me, they seem to be on the threshold of human intellectual awareness, as revealed by Dr. Francine Patterson and her fascinating sign language communications with Koko the gorilla. They exhibit so many of our human qualities, yet between our encroaching civilization and their shrinking natural environ­ment they are struggling to survive. But for someone else, the sim­ilarities we share with primates may facilitate an immediate con­nection with the animal.

The many wondrous creatures that inhabit the earth may de­liver different messages for different people. Try to keep an open mind and heart to what each animal has to say to you.

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Дата добавления: 2015-11-16