At sixes and sevens

I WONDER IF you remember that I was making a series of paintings of the seven chakras as icon-like characters painted on Ikea breadboards? Well the last of the seven was completed recently and as I go to tell you about it I realise that I never showed you the sixth. So here we are, at sixes and sevens.

The whole series was to be painted over some time so that development and change showed in my work. Each image is that particular chakra personified, astride an associated animal, set against a background of appropriate colour and holding an apt symbolic item. Each time the figure alternated between male and female, and with the progression of seven they aged. The characters all point to the appropriate chakra point on their body and the horizon line crosses behind them there too.

So here we have indigo Ajna .. the sixth chakra, a wise white haired owl-riding woman holding a crystal ball of magic mushrooms. This point on the body is the third eye, and it symbolizes far-seeing, intuition, psychic perception, imagination, dream interpretation, luminescence.
Here are snippets of the painting in progress...


And here she is as a finished piece:


There is an incredibly intricate iconography surrounding this spiritual system, involving sounds, minerals, planets, psychological states and demons, as well as animals, colours and so on...
I have based the colours of this sixth icon a little on those that can be found deep inside the feldspar minerals like labradorite (also linked with third-eye things). I was given a beautiful piece of this (right) on a necklace by my grandmother when I was younger and remember being happy to look inside it at the beautiful refracted colours for hours. Almost as if the northern lights had been bottled.



And so from indigo to violet. From watery mineral to gold. For the final piece in this series, Sahasrara, I thought about how this ultimate breadboard icon should differ from the previous six, standing, as it does, for a kind of enlightenment, wisdom and understanding. I decided this figure should be ageless, sexless, facing forward unlike the others, and crowned in gold like an iconic saint. Our seventh character also is seated this time, not on an animal, but a winged chair, and holds the very same painting of which they are part. Perhaps a sort of self-awareness, or weird ever-diminishing quantum realization?


I am particularly pleased with the golden halo, made with gold wax over layers of oil paint. The nimbus or aureole was used widely in both western and eastern religious art to denote sanctity. Here I have connected it with the crown chakra and its associated enlightenment.



And so with the seven completed, I await eagerly a photograph of them all together on Bob's wall. I have always considered the icon amongst the most beautiful of all arts, and so was delighted that to follow on from this series, Bob has commissioned me to paint an iconic triptych. The details and story of which shall have to wait some long while until I have the time to uncover them at length.

Vissudha and the problem of Ultramarine

BLUE IS NOT my favourite colour. I have hardly ever worn jeans in my life for this reason. I am an autumn person, rusty ochrey muddy olivey burnt maroons adorn my work, my world and my body. I don't know why this is. Perhaps because I was born in the autumn, perhaps because there are not many natural things in the world with bright blue colouring (flowers aside, and berries, and the sky... hmm maybe blue isn't so scarce afterall!). A mudgy inky indigo can just about get away with it for me, but bright royal blue: absolutely not!
Strangely, though, I can also find some intense blues beautiful: Maroccan doors, Madonnas' robes, Medieval skies, but I struggle greatly to use these blues in my work.

Consider then, how difficult I found the fifth painting in the Chakra series which I am undertaking. Each of these paintings has to take a colour of the spectrum as its main hue. Number five was to be blue. And I couldn't lean towards indigo to make life easier, as the next painting has to be indigo, and the two must be distinct from each other.
I tend towards a fairly limited palette when I paint, and the only blue I use is French Ultramarine. The name "Ultramarine" derives from Middle Latin 'ultramarinus', literally "beyond the sea" because it was imported from Asia by sea. Natural Ultramarine occurs as a component of lapis lazuli.
My oil painting technique has got more and more scratchily aged in recent paintings, which I like, and it was in this way that I think I managed to get a blue enough blue without it being garish. Bob likes it: particularly the eyes, the elephant and the blue; and he is currently sitting with it while he conjures words to describe what it evokes for him. I think it is appropriate that as a series of meditative paintings, that will serve almost as icons, blue is a necessary "heaven".
Here is Vissudha... it is about the voice and communication, creativity and purification.
Next comes indigo....

Anahata

AS SOME of you may have read, I have been commissioned to paint the seven chakras personified.
The whole project is to take place over some time, so that there is a development within me as I paint each one, working my way through the seven points. They are being painted in oils on Ikea breadboards!
You can see my first three in the series here and here.

I did not know a huge amount about this old Sanskrit mapping of the body and spirit before undertaking this job, and my commissioner (I shall call him Bob) is very knowledgeable about all the intricate aspects of the yoga and meditation he studies, as well as the spiritual symbolisms behind it all.
As well as this he is an ex-drawing pupil of mine and a maths and science teacher too.
A while back when I posted the third of my paintings for this series, some of you commented that it might be interesting to read his eloquent reflections on my works. I am not used to such detailed, interesting and thoughtful responses to commissioned work, so it is always a delight to hear back from Bob when he has received each painting, and he sees things in a quite different way from me. I paint my interpretations of each chakra and its meaning, whereas Bob is able to put into words (with a mathematical brain too) what he sees and feels in each piece.

I thought with the fourth and latest of these paintings I would also include a selection of these kind and insightful responses, which he has written and agreed to be shared. You need to click on them to read at full size.

Manipura

A YELLOW painting on a yellow day for you. The sun is shining beautiful warmly out there and here is the third in the series of seven paintings I am making for a client, finished a little while ago. There was going to be a stage by stage series of photographs for you of this painting progressing, with mistakes and changes and developings.. but alas they were on the hard drive. I am very pleased with this third character and his ram and with the yellowish scratchy paintwork, and so, I am happy to say, is his owner...
The painting series is to take place over some time so that even though there is a cohesive theme to the paintings, hopefully a development in my work will be evident in the seven pieces when they are all done.
I am finding it fascinating to read the thoughts of my client after he receives each painting. I find that the ideas I might subconsciously communicate in the works are not very easily accessible to me in a verbal way, which I suppose is why I paint. But to hear the thoughts and reactions of the "commissioner" written eloquently, is a luxury I am not used to, and encourages me that I must be doing something right. Number four will begin soon. A happy yellow monday to you all...

Seven Paintings

I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO PAINT seven paintings ... seven characters representing the seven chakras in each of the seven colours.
Chakra is a Sanskrit term meaning circle or wheel and describes a system that is used in many belief systems. Each chakra point is a place in the body and represents also a spiritual aspect. Taken together the seven chakras describe a flow of energy and a development within.


If you were to look for imagery of the chakras you would most likely find swathes of rainbows and swirling misty colourful evanescences. I chose instead to paint seven interesting and strange characters, in broken oil paint on wooden breadboards. This commission will take time and I will work one by one through the seven from tailbone to the top of my head. In each painting I will include a horizon which crosses the body at the chakra point and an animal associated with the chakra's spiritual aspect. In each painting a colour will dominate, but quietly. I hope that when hung together on their owner's wall, they will look like a series of old icons, strange and perhaps mystical in a very different sense from many other visual representations of old eastern belief systems.