Violent Grace

This art piece has stirred up a lot of emotions both personally for me, and on a larger scale for others who have viewed it than most other works I have done, so I think it fair that I release a more detailed symbolism of this work. Regardless of what I say here, viewers will still see things in this piece that come from their own perspective, as this is how art works.

This is an emblematic piece, which may look simple at first glance, but contains a wealth of symbols. Emblematic art is a dying breed, its vestiges surviving in the semi “heraldic” charges on flags and seals of countries. It surfaced at a time when Egyptian hieroglyphs were a point of fascination, and had not yet been translated. It was thought that the pictures contained hidden truths, and were drawn in a specific way so as to obscure their meaning. Alchemical art is rife with emblems, packed with symbols of planets and characters from Greek myths to encode the messages of chemical recipes, and the language “of the philosophers”. The images seem disjointed, dreamlike, even nightmarish, but all are the vocabulary of a distinct visual language.

My piece draws some symbolism directly from alchemy to describe a psychological process, a change in a state of being, and to define some archetypes. Violent Grace is a modern version of the “conjunctio”, which was represented in alchemical art by the joining or wedding of a king and queen. The king was red, sulfur, fire and spirit. His symbols  also contained the sun, and lions. The queen was white, mercury, water and soul. Her symbols were flying birds and the moon, among others.

Here, we have a dark male figure against a red background, and a colorful female figure against a white background. They are of course the red king and white queen, but also represent different polarities, as well as distinct archetypes. If you were to examine the content and details of the collage elements behind them, you would soon notice that the background gives further clues as to their personalities. Behind the man in black, the collage pieces are ordered in placement, almost gridlike, and contain pieces of legible writing with few pictures. Behind the colorful female, the collage pieces are more haphazard and tumble over the page with snippets of foreign languages and

numerous blurry images.

The postures of the figures give us information about their nature and the process that is taking place, for this is not just the conjunction, it is the fixation of the volatile. The dark man is in a more rigid pose on the ground, representing heavier fixed energy. The woman is stepping down from out of the clouds, and represents that which is volatile, ephemeral, and changeable. The fixation of the volatile is an important step in the conjunctio, which is the process of two opposing polarities reconciling their relationship with each other.  In the cases of my piece, we are seeing the coming together of male and female polarities, as well as the conscious and subconscious. This is what alchemists would call the spiritualizing of matter and the materializing  of the spirit. The fixation of the volatile is the stabilizing of the qualities that arise from this important meeting, so a new phase of life can begin.

The characters are complex in their identities. Both are personal mages, but also archetypes, and there is some overlap of each others qualities in this piece. The male figure who I have the most history with, has appeared to me in dreams, artwork and writing for decades.  His general appearance hasn’t changed much over the years; he’s always tall, pale, with shoulder length tousled black hair and very light blue eyes, with an intense gaze. He is my animus figure, and also the voice of my subconscious. At the same time, he is wearing a dark overlay of “shadow qualities”. I have written an entire paper about him with these aspects, and how this image is more than just specific to me. His appearance combines at least five different characters together, though many people have seen even more in him that I did not intend, which has shown me that he is far more accessible as an archetype than I was even aware of. He has associations with death, destruction of old forms, and change. He is fairly androgynous in appearance, with his long hair, softer features, and flowing coat, showing that he has more than just the typical masculine aspects hidden within him, and that some overlap with the female figure is taking place.

Although male energy is associated with the sun, which usually stands for consciousness, in my case he is a secondary symbol of the unconscious.  The female, though she bears the dreamlike background and seemingly random fish and the moon, is actually a more conscious figure. She is actively coming down to meet him, and the look in her eyes is one of intent and confidence, where his is almost pleading. She is also made of various literary or pop culture characters, muses being among them, but she represents more the goal of this particular process. She builds were he leaves off in destruction. She is who I want to become. The energies between them are already being shared, even as they are meeting one another.

The female figure’s colorful nature plays off of the notion of “the peacock’s tail”, a stage in alchemy that follows what is commonly experienced as the dark night of the soul. It’s a stage of “colorful” insights that tells someone that they are on the right path, but it only a midpoint and not to be taken as the finality of the individuation.  The dark night, which is a period of intense mourning as old constructs are toppled in the psyche, is represented by the man in black (the dark “knight”).  This picture represents the moment after the dark night has lifted, when the worlds of the two figures are already in collision, and the shift to brightness or illumination is seen on the horizon. In the middle space between the two, where their hands are about to touch, there is a love song, and roses. The rose is a recurring symbol of the union of opposites as well as the quintessence, which was defined as a fifth and more subtle element. The male figure has red roses, which signify passion and love. The female has blue, which signify mystery and spiritual longing.

They have both removed their masks, which lie at their feet. The mask of the man in black is a half mask which is cracked, broken and seems to be weeping from one eye, but also retains an exaggerated painted smile. This is a reference to several of the characters that he was based on. Her mask is a Noh Theatre mask of a young girl. This visage has appeared in much of my art as of late, as a sign and the face of a character called Muse. Her symbol is the Noh mask with butterfly wings on either side. She also appears with asian features in some of my other works. The butterfly is a symbol of transformation here, and the removal of the masks means that these two are seeing each other truly and honestly for the first time. I feel it pertinent to mention the masquerade scene from Labyrinth here, as well as the lyrics to the "World Falling Down", and that Jareth the goblin king is another character who makes his home in the Man in Black persona. I often pictured my figures dancing together, which I think was very much inspired by the Labyrinth imagery.

This piece is a very intense psychological portrait of a process that can and does occur in all of us. It is about the never ending dance of identity and individuation, the shifting polarities. It is the movements of competing  brain states, and ultimately, it is self acceptance. It is the love story that is the template for all romances, the relationship that everyone seeks as their own but has trouble finding outside of themselves. It is the love of one’s true self, precisely, that this represents. Those who can understand this love unfolding within them, are more likely to go out into the world and have better relationships than those who don’t. The process is magical, healing, and necessary, but also difficult and for some, a very frightening and elusive one. What I have learned via this piece and this process, is that the world does not teach us how to get there. It leaves us hints and clues at best, and more often than not tries to block our progress along the way.  Regardless of whether or not you truck with the notion of spirituality, this is a spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical process that can take a very long time, but is indeed real. It is only by truly listening to ourselves that we can grasp what this sort of process will do to us, and where it will take us.