The Galleries
Eight of Swords
High Priestess / Hierophant
The Moon
Gallery 1: Eight of Swords
This gallery is based thematically on the Tarot card The Eight of Swords. This card traditionally shows a bound person surrounded by swords, and evokes a sense of physical or psychological claustrophobia, of being trapped, bound by a disability. As the images in this set suggest, however, this card also sets out a time of healing, convalescence, and regrouping. This introduction will help explain, for example, the “Jesus-in-a-wheelchair” motif as well as the similarly incapacitated depiction of Steven Hawking. The images in the gallery include several completed oil paintings as well as a few digital sketches.
Gallery 2: The High Priestess / The Hierophant
The cards representing this gallery show The High Priestess, and, at her feet, The Hierophant. The theme of this set is “heresy,” in the sense of unusual, problematic readings of traditional religious texts. When upright, The Hierophant represents orthodoxy and traditional authoritarian relationships. Here, supine and turned counter-clockwise, he becomes perhaps the clearest tarot symbol for dissent: questioning doctrine, rejecting institutional religion, i.e. for heresy. Thematically, in the context of the gallery, this card suggests forging one’s own spiritual/creative path rather than accepting inherited beliefs.
Similarly, The High Priestess represents hidden wisdom, esoteric knowledge, and mysteries outside official institutions. She further evokes traditions suppressed or excluded by orthodox religion such as Gnosticism and “pagan” spirituality.
With this in mind we approach the imagery in this gallery: the “Dark Madonna” – also thought of as the Great Whore of Babylon, as well as aberrant evocations of Christ and various patron Saints. Images shown here are mostly oil paintings on canvas; a few are still in the state of digital sketches.
Gallery 3: The Moon
The Moon is the quintessential “rabbit hole” card, in the sense that it represents a “vision quest,” a creative journey which begins in confusion and ambiguity and in which the wanderer is guided the wisdom of dreams, of ancient archetypes and enigmatic oracles: i.e. the Collective Unconscious. This card resonates on a deeply personal level: in my recurrent dreams I often have a sense of disorientation, of wandering in search of an elusive goal, guided by the uncertain light of the moon. The Moon, then, represents a personal creative journey, an attempt to navigate a landscape where certainty is impossible.
The religious education of my childhood offered persuasive stories filled with clarity and sunlight. Parallel to the brilliant daylight of these narratives, however, were other, less certain, yet somehow more helpful, stories such as that of Alice wandering in search of her “wonderland.”
The images in this gallery (both oil paintings and digital sketches) are a syncretistic blend of mythical traditions, and are intended as questions without answers, as a call to further questioning.