Month: July 2014

In Solidarity

The world feels like it is burning up at the moment: planes being shot out of the air, broken bodies tumbling forth; beautiful children being denied safe passage by my own people; other beautiful children huddling in terror as bombs drop from the sky; friends who I love , on the other side, living with a sense of doom and dread and I imagine moral ambivalence.

  But what has particularly upset me of late is the terrible choice ancient Chaldean Christians have faced , convert or die by the sword. For all of my love of the blessed saints, I don’t want to see more made.  These ancient peoples forced from their ancestral homes, their sacred churches now  at the mercy of savage thugs (New York Times, source ) .

This print is for displaced ancestors of Christendom.

IMG_5299

Agnus Dei II

2014

relief print on paper

9 x 12 inches

This unfortunate state has become a bit of an obsession for me.  The heated rhetoric, is divisive and unhelpful , so much so my husband has asked me to stop speaking of the unpleasantness.  So I turn to other means of expression, one of the most accessible, relief print.  I am reworking my relief print Agnus Dei, this time with Gazan blood and Ukrainian fire. I need to rework a bit still ,a little too much  indiscriminate crimson  ;  but given the amount of spilt blood, tears and broken lives perhaps the excess drama is right on target.

 Pax vobiscum,

Lg

Tlazoltéotl, a difficult birth

My esposo so rarely asks anything of me, he supports my work in every sense , so when he made a request for me to paint a portrait of the “Eater of Filth”, the Aztec goddess Tlazoltéotl, I could hardly say no. I introduced David to this fierce goddess when in Mexico City , reading aloud the words of the great Mexicophile , Alma Reed’s and her description of Tlazoltéotl :

” Primarily an earth goddess, Tlazoltéotl, “Eater of Filth”, alone among the female deities had a moral significance, since in eating refuse, she was believed to consume the sins of mankind, leaving them pure.” ( The Ancient Past of Mexico, 1966).

 I knew this would resonate with my beloved, for aside from Roman priests and the sacrament of confession, few professions aside from his own(psychoanalysis) are able to break through the wall of darkness and allow the  pure light of renewal into one’s soul.

He asked for a portrait of this patroness of sinners, of purification and of curing, of misdeeds and of childbirth and of renewal.

And unofficially, of psychic renewal.

 This is it.

For my darling, Tlazoltéotl, a difficult birth.

IMG_5259

Tlazoltéotl, a difficult birth.

2014

oil on panel

18 by 24 inches

My depiction of this great goddess was in a great part inspired by the well known depiction such as the one that follows. We in fact have a silly clay whistle of her, purchased at the base of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, sitting on our dining room sideboard.

Tlazolteotl

  In this image she is giving birth to one of the maize gods; again, a symbol of rebirth.

According to the Miller/Traube Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico, she is often depicted with a broom to represent her ability to cleanse; I thought a dainty dust rag more fitting for my goddess. I’m not going to psychoanalyze my own painting, why the amputated semi- aborted men? I do not know.  I do know I chose butterflies, an almost universal symbol of the soul, some to be set free and to flourish and some to be crushed to their death, at her whim.

This seemed fitting for this goddess who we all most confront at some time ; the Aztecs, according to Reed, would make offerings and auto sacrifice to her upon their death bed. But as my own psychoanalyst interpreted recently, this great goddess of redemption, this “Eater of Sin”, needs our sins to survive as much as we need her for redemption.

Be well,

Lg

The Hero Twins Emerge Again

Yesterday in between a job and printmaking class I sketched in a new painting. My friend, the influential artist  Judithe Hernandez (http://www.judithehernandez.com) suggested I paint my recent Primavera on a larger scale, perhaps in grissaile.

As I respect her immensely, I’m doing just that.

IMG_5254

The original painting is far smaller, the new painting will be altered a bit and will be diptych .

The original Primavera follows:
Greco_Primavera-watercolor copy

I must finish another (paying!) project first, but while the passion burns I was  eager to put pencil to canvas.

LG