UPDATE: This blog entry was originally published August 2022. You can shop new items from this collection here: Let Go and Let Goddess
In January I started out on a project to work on creating a simplified workflow. I used a figure sketch that I already had on hand and drafted it out on ten pages of watercolor paper. I had been given ten boards that would fit into my drying rack, which I sprayed with a clear sealant to make them water resistant. I stretched the paper on the boards using gum tape which I probably bought in 1992. One of the rolls had glued itself on one side either due to getting humidity or damp over the years in storage; so many feet of tape needed to be discarded. The tape, predictably, did not work reliably, gapping on one side of each of nearly all the boards. One of the pages tore during stretching right through the head of one of the figures.
I was going to make them all goddesses, or rather allow them to tell me who they were. I started with a background wash of gouache color, different for each. I have many years of experience in watercolors, having been trained in wet-on-wet and vail painting, but I am new to gouache. I have long loved working in watercolors and inks, and I would describe gouache as the halfway point between watercolors and acrylics, very much like painting in inks.
I worked on them as they revealed themselves to me, switching between two or three at a time, reading up on the goddesses, and watching videos about them. The figure has exaggerated arms, long enough to encompass their adherents and domains. However, instead of uplifted hands holding up, welcoming, and embracing, their hands are downturned releasing the emblems of their divinity and all expectations. 
Between days spent painting, researching, and experimenting, I worked on my website, client work, and smaller projects. I became obsessed with Hilma af Klint and Archive 81, and read up on Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Anthroposophy. I revisited Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf education. I discovered artists Rosaleen Norton and Kat Shaw. I joined virtual coworking art groups and A.R.T.S Anonymous.
In mid-March, a stranger called to inform me that my mother had passed away. We had been estranged for more than twenty years. My mother was alienated from all her family for many years at her end. She had many issues with addiction, physical health, and mental health. She also was abusive, neglectful, manipulative, and unkind.
It was not lost on me that I was working on a series of goddesses when my mother died. While I worked to connect with the divine feminine, the woman who gave birth to me died. After years of being verbally abusive, she became even more combative, slipped into a coma, and passed, ending once and for all the possibility of reconciliation. Unlikely as I knew that was; I never knew my mother to reconcile with anyone.
My goddesses are releasing all that has come before and are stepping into their full, ever-expanding power. Some are maidens, some are mothers; some are faithful, others are promiscuous. They are warriors, healers, artists; they are of the harvest, the waters, the light, the universe. They grew and proclaimed themselves to be much more than a test workflow. The goddess with the tear in her head became my early test piece where I tried new tools and technics, and she strongly spoke to me about who she was despite her injury.
As I explore ways to join my art practice with my spiritual practice, I understand that many things can be true at once. In this series of goddesses, I have made decisions on which attributes to emphasize over others. I hope that you might identify with one, or all, of them as I have.
UPDATE: This blog entry was originally published August 2022. You can shop new items from this collection here: Let Go and Let Goddess