Virgo-Demeter Dreams 005

This is a very large piece I did specially for a touring exhibition. To put the scale in perspective, the "face" of this is human size. The eyes are acrylic and the whole piece is mixed media, combing natural found items, human hair, epoxy art clay, polymer clay, plaster, and all painted in layers of acrylic washes. The piece took me the better part of two months constant and hard work to complete, and all this done while being very ill and recovering- or trying to any way- from said illness. Any way, here's a bunch of text that only a few will read, but if you want to know the why's and wherefore's, here 'tis:

"The Enlightenment Cabinet" is a wandering art exhibition curated by artist Yvette Endrijautzki. With its current presentation "CONSTELLATION- an Ouverture to the Zodiac", over forty local, national and international artists will introduce their own interpretation of the 12 Zodiac signs, approaching the subject in many different media. From sculpture to illustration, from painting to mixed media, a diversity of the zodiacal.

This piece was done for an exhibition celebrating the signs of the Zodiac- I chose Virgo. With this piece I didn't want to do something that everyone had already seen over and over: as an artist I feel I have to offer something like nothing anyone else has done and my own vision is very rarely the same as others' any way, for better or worse…

Originally Demeter was really a goddess of Earth and nature as well as the seasons more than she was just the harvest. This is also meant to be the Goddess NOW after having slept for centuries and after having been treated a little less than well by all humanity... So I wasn't interested in representing the notion of plenty-as a nod to our over exploitation of Natures' resources. As to the Green Man connotation- an image I love- before images of the Green Man there were the images of the tree nymphs- often shown as trees or partial human figures blended with trees- and they are all female entities or at least feminine. Indeed, in many other cultures tree spirits were viewed as feminine for the most part. Plus she is also inspired by Suvetar hence the wheat. But my choice to show her as green skinned is to, one, show her inseparable connection to Nature and secondly, to show her as an utterly non-human entity: truly an Otherworldly being. However, she still sports about her person a few of "...the reddest of stolen cherries..."


My main thrust was to offer a more powerful and impactful image of Virgo and an original and not overdone version and vision of Demeter as a Nature and Earth goddess outside of the realms of the human/mortal harvest time and domain while at the same time still showing some connection to that realm of influence.</b>