(60” x 48”) Oil on canvas 2018
This painting was based on a period leading up to my spiritual awakening. It encapsulates a dreamlike landscape that mirrors the layered complexities of my subconscious mind at that time. It features a lavishly dressed woman at a bit of a distance. This separation is supposed to convey a liminal space between longing and sorrow where her love feels perpetually beyond reach.
The piece is structured around the astrological configuration of a Grand Water Trine, based on my own birth chart. The recurrent inverted triangles throughout the painting symbolize the water element and present as visual anchors for this configuration. The numbers form a close equilateral triangle, representing the configuration and the Water Trinity, also known in Vedic astrology as the Moksha Trikona. This trinity signifies the spiritual and intuitive houses associated with emotional depth, transformation, and liberation. In addition, the three planetary lords in each of of those houses are from my own chart and are accompanied by visual metaphors near the numbers.
The Fourth House, governing emotional foundations and the inner domestic world, is depicted through a sugar skull paired with a dove releasing butterflies from the woman’s caged stomach. This imagery symbolizes Mercury in Cancer, juxtaposing intellect and emotion, and reflecting the tension between rational thought and deep feeling.
The Eighth House, associated with transformation, intimacy, and rebirth, conveys something darker. I depicted a phoenix-like dove rising from demonic entities being released from Pandora’s box, which blossoms into a lotus flower. The lotus sprouted a swan and the goddess Saraswati playing her veena, signifying Pluto in Scorpio and the alchemical process of transmuting darkness into beauty, creativity, and spiritual power.
The Twelfth House is linked to the subconscious, dissolution, and the unseen realms. What is being conveyed here is a dove carrying a flower and two fishes encircling a Moon pierced by an arrow. The Moon is slowly melting and a pair of hands connected from her abdomen extend before it, which represents the divine and how divinity is within us. This is supposed to symbolize Moon in Pisces and the hazy, dreamlike qualities of compassion, mysticism, and divine longing which is omnipresent, yet somehow felt at a distance.
Through this work, I sought to portray love as both a sacred bridge to the divine and a source of deep-seated, emotional struggle. The painting is a form of contemplation on my own astrological configuration and an impression of love, loss, and a deep yearning for union with something greater than one’s self.
