Continuing the underpainting on the latest painting

Painting "I shall fear no evil" by Stephanie Tihanyi
(all copyrights held by the artist)

For me, to be an artist means being able to see beauty in this world but also being unable to be unaware of the tragedy of the world we live in. As my heart breaks and my outrage ignites over the massacre's, beheadings, slavery and genocide, while the world chooses to stand and watch turns a blind eye to the evil of a religion, I find my paintings becoming very ugly, they now have death, blood and war in them.


I have done some more under painting in the old masters Flemish tradition of egg tempera, this is over an ink and English red earth ground. I hope to have all the under painting done by tomorrow, ready for the first glaze of yellow. I have used my live model sketches for my figure and the plant is a tall frangipani-like, white flowering plant, growing in my garden, of which I am yet to identify.







Painting "I shall fear no evil" by Stephanie Tihanyi
(all copyrights held by the artist)

Inner Self Helper, Higher Self, continued

From Out of the Stone - by Stephanie Tihanyi
(all copyrights held by the artist)

The poem I wrote around  1986-9, I cannot remember the exact year. I am sure I had moved to Luton (my birth town) from Bristol. However I know the formations of the poem took hold in my mind, as early as 1984-5, while living in Bristol. It started out as a inner thought or feeling that I had slowly become aware of and that was emerging, A need to find who I really was, my thoughts about myself, feelings, perceptions, opinions about trying to define and have a cohesive and less nebulous concept about my identity. At that time my sense of self was ill defined, if it existent at all. Constantly shifting, contradictory, changing and shifting, intangible like spiraling smoke. I related and operated in the world like someone on auto pilot, stoned, dazed, unconscious, like someone in shell shock, numbed out and distant but super sensitive at the same time.
The poem starts with an observer walking past a derelict structure, a house? a crumbled derelict ruined house. They stop to watch a magical entity or being slowly emerge and take form from the cracks, stains  and shapes in the crumbling plaster and bricks. Years later, I understand the Jungian interpretation of house in dreams and the unconscious, is the self, the personality. Mine felt ruined and neglected, but now out of it, something marvelous and magical was emerging, something like an Angel. I say Angel, which is strange because I consider myself in no way religious at all. This alien being comes through silently, without word, unannounced, no birth cry, its not being born, its emerging, like it was always there, always existed, hidden, never manifested (to the conscious, the conscious self) before. What was happening is something quite beautiful, mysterious and sublime. The twelve stars about the head strangely alludes to some sort of biblical reference, also is, "the woman clothed with the sun" in Revelations. I was mystified over the Christian imagery, as I consider myself pretty much an non-believer or at least agnostic, least that's what I tell myself. Never baptized, neither parents ever went to church. I always have thought and felt myself more comfortable with  scientific and logical thought than anything else, with a big distrust of religion. Yet I live unaware or un- acknowledging of this deeply spiritual side.  Clearly, this experience demonstrates an existence of a higher self or higher power that somehow I am connected to. For the first time, I got a glimpse that there was something divine in me, some spark, I was not a ruined old shell of a person, there WAS something valuable in side me, even though I may not  always be aware of it, not feel it, or it may be hidden from me most of the time but I have seen it and it has shown me, that I should fight for myself, that I was something worth fighting for.

(The image is a detail from a small tempera painting on wood panel I did at the time)

The Emergence of the Inner Self Helper

The Aspects of the Self

From the Stone - Stephanie Tihanyi
(copyright held by artist)

The Spirit stepped forth from the Stone,

Emerging slowly, without sound, save for a chiming and tinkerling,

Like small glass bells or birdsong in quartz, echoing,

Small sparking notes tumbled and cascaded and pushed ahead into hard won spaces.

The queen of Sedition put Logic to flight,

in an empty lot of rubble and weeds, a derilict stone site.

Ripping aside the fabric of boundries, upon the infinite Mirror of God,

Altered forces stepped through.

Her many parts, reflections
A multiplicity of bright forms... and winged!,
Concisting of many elements,
both part and seperate.Golden skin was silver sheened,

The aspect of the face, alien yet familliar,

The crowned head sprung twelve spining galaxies,

Bright suns.




Demeter-Sketch by Stephanie Tihanyi
(copyright held by artist)

I have often wondered what this poem I wrote meant. So here I have tried to analize my own poem. I realise I am writing this is in a detached intellectual mode, but thats all I got right now as these things dont all come together when you want them.

Any infomation is better than nothing I say, who knows I may get something in the future. So here goes.

The aspect (alter, covert or hidden undeveloped part of the personality), emerged from the stone (a frozen or arrested part of the personality).

Emerging slowly, without sound (unbidden, unexpected, without any prior knowledge of, unannounced as of course a split off part of the self would do).

The Queen of Sedition (a female authority archetype that has come to overthrow and upsurp, aided by the unconcious, the false conciouseness)

The fabric of boundries. ( a break in the partitions and intra-psychic walls of dissociation). Mirror of God, (not a pathology but a natural operation).

Her many parts, reflections, a multiplicity of bright forms- and winged, Concisting of many elements, both part and seperate, (Subselves, alters, self-states)

The aspect of the face alien yet familliar, ( the yet unrecognised and co-concious parts of the self)