The Absence of (emotional) Gravity?

The Absence of Gravity -by Stephanie Tihanyi (copyright held by artist)

Material for the hidden subconscious and the content of dreams has been the core and inspiration of most of my art work. The above painting comes directly from an recurring dream. Though now painted it no longer occurs as much, maybe because it is now in the possession of my conscious mind. It is said that all humans dream. According to Jung the symbols of our dreams are held and kept alive in the collective unconscious and passed down in each generation through our art and culture. There has been noted similarities in dream themes around the world and in different cultures. Although dream content is countlessly rich in diversity, it has been researched that there have been identified as many as 12 themes that seem common to all. I wonder also about the uncommon ones too and if my occurring dream is uncommon or not. Never the less, uncommon or not they are all highly mysterious to us and come with an emotional depth and insight and intelligence that often surpasses our conscious thinking brain, by light years. I will now recount the content of one of my re-occurring dreams and in brackets make analytical notes for myself.

It starts in the early morning and it starts with me believing I have woken up from a night of sleep, (woken up). I get out of bed and leave the house by the back door and go out onto the beach in the backyard. Its cool and the sun has not come over the hills yet. The air is very still and the sky and flat reflected sea, are a pale soft blue. The stillness is very palatable and (stillness) there is total silence, like in a vacuum. There are no sounds of traffic, no dogs that bark , no breeze to rustle leaves, it feels like everything has stopped and been (switched off). There are no people on the beach. and there is a very profound sense of dissociation and disconnectedness. I am alone it seems and something strange has happened, something very odd has taken place. I lift my eyes to the sky and its as if I have seen it for the first time, its there, I see it now. The sky is filled, not with clouds but with trees!. Receding way up into the stratosphere and way out over the horizon, trees!. Trees of all types, shapes and sizes lay horizontally, (suspended) in the sky it seems. I am stuck in awe. It appears they do not move but when I look move carefully, I can see that they are drifting very very slowly on an (unseen, un-felt) breeze, high above me.

 I am quite taken aback. What is this?. How can this be, this is not normal. Something has happened to the world, the physical world, to the planet!. What has happened to the gravity?, its been (switched off)...sort of. Now I am seriously alarmed! Amid all this seeming stillness and tranquility, this is very disturbing!. I look for answers and it strikes me, some one has 'done something' to the planet's gravity!. The planet's gravity! What!, that's like one of the fundamental laws of nature, of the universe even, you cant mess with that!. That's what holds things together, and now its gone!. I begin trying to figure out who could of done it and why. It occurs to me that maybe someone, scientists, or who the hell knows, have been exploring, fiddling with or experimenting with a new kind of bomb or technology that has inadvertently altered the 'very laws of gravity!'. Jeez!!, now they have gone and fucked things up! Now they finally gone and done it!. they fucked up something so essential as gravity and now we are all screwed big time!. Even though it all looks nice and tranquil and uneventful,, something, really really big has gone down, that's irreversible.

 Things have been altered..., and altered for good or bad?, we don't yet know. The repercussions of what has been done, with this messing with the laws of 'cause and effect' we are not prepared for!. Is this partly because it is beyond our knowledge! or because of our disconnectedness to the natural world of consequences. Holy shit! what now! and what kind of gravity is it anyway? This of course is when I wake up, feeling quite uneasy.

Visionary painting : The Smile of the Seed




Smile of the Corn Seed - by Stephanie Tihanyi
(copyright held by artist)

                                                               
 The painting I am currently working on quite obsessively is a work that first began many years ago. It started out as a small painting on card that never got finished, it was filed away, packed under papers and files. It was made with egg tempera paints, the type that can be commercially bought. Due to the damp conditions of its storing, the painting degraded and developed a dusty powder on its surface, probably a mold of some kind and the colors faded also. It was ruined. I felt bad about not having taken better care of my work and did not want to lose the image, as it had a deep meaning and significance for me that I had never really understood. It was as if a piece of me would die and be lost forever, if I did not resurrect the image into a new painting. I have always had it in mind to redo the painting and make further developments with it.

I have given many names to the painting over the years. Names such as 'Demeter the Seed' ' Smile of the Seed",‘The Corn Goddess', 'The Grain of Persephone', Well of Minerva', : all ancient Greek, Roman and Celtic goddesses of agriculture and arts.  Yet somehow to me the soul in the eyes and expression in the face seems to be much older than that. The ethnicity also is a mystery. Some people tell me, the she looks oriental, and some a bit African, strange, the eyes are blue but the face is clearly not Nordic. As an intuitive artist, it is not me who decides what race the woman is, I am just doing my hardest to capture the truest depiction of something that is visionary.   If the woman fits no current ethnicity, then I feel she is of a very old race indeed, an ancestor from far back. No one person looks like their ancestor did thousands of years later, all peoples appearances change with migrations and environments .

The face looks out at you, across the space of time. It looks young, yet very old, with knowledge accumulated of having lived many life times.  Half hidden and half in shadow, there seems to be a shyness, but no it’s not that. The eyes are full of capacity and wisdom and hidden power. She hides herself by choice, from the eyes of the corrupt or the ignorant and foolish, choosing when and who to be known by.

In my mind I have asked myself, who is she?, an archetype from the subconscious?, or some sort of genetic memory, of a far distant relative?. Do I act as some kind of a medium, is this a spirit from another place?. I am asking questions that no one in the reality we currently inhabit, can answer. From this futility I can only move to a second question that may have some answers, as it comes back to me. What message, do I feel the appearance of this mysterious image, is reveling to me?. That's a mystery that will take some working at.

So at least I know she offers me a mystery and it seems this mystery is not offered to all or just anyone. It seems like a gift, something precious, something timeless. Normally we think of a gift as being something wonderful you get for free!. Like “geez!, thanks a million!”. But what kind of special gift gets secretly offered to you, that requires you to work damn hard to attain it?. There really is no such thing as a free gifts, is that an allusion. Are all the true worthy gifts that exist only things you gain with your love, sacrifice and labor?. I believe so, yes.