Dark Feminine Rising

This is the largest art piece I have ever done. It was completed over a seven-year period. I started it in 2011, then abandoned the piece for many years before coming back to finish it in 2018. It is a very different piece than it would have been if I had pushed through when I first began. It is also a piece that holds the same title as my upcoming book, Dark Feminine Rising: A Re-Visioning of Love. It is based on a dream that I had at the beginning of my dissertation writing process, which was the foundation for the book. The dream was really more of a visitation from the Black Madonna, or in the terms I recognized her at the time: Demeter. That dream is described in full in the book. Here I would like simply to say that this art piece represents the return of the dark feminine to the world. James Hillman, Marion Woodman, and others have gone so far as to say that in a patriarchal world, the underworld (unconscious) becomes the feminine, and that all dreamwork and soulwork is to recover her from the underworld and blend her wisdom with the intellectual and technical knowledge of our times. The sigils on this piece remain a mystery! The image of the ship on the bottom left is from several ancient goddess civilizations as discovered in the work of Maria Gimbutas and represent the sacred marriage (the hieros gamos) of the masculine and feminine energies, which are believed to be the highest level of initiation in the individuation journey.