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Last weekend I had the immense pleasure of visiting Giverny to experience the house and gardens of Monet. The grounds were an orgy to the senses, the explosions of color and perfumes of the flowers. Escaping the crowds, we found the Ancient Restaurant Baudy Hotel, the famous hotel that became an artists' colony in the late 1800's. Baudy was the "American painters' hotel" where everyone would dance the night sipping their whiskey. The bill that Cezanne paid at the bar is well know: "Mister Cezanne, two whiskies with Mister Monet". The artists' studio is still in the garden, open tubes and pigments well aged, and dirty palates that I had the urge to take and clean! The first two photos above were taken at the gardens there.
The next day we found ourselves rather by accident at the medieval town of Senlis, after a fabulous lunch we wandered the town and entered the cathedral. All three of us were rooted to the floor when we looked way up and saw the Virgin and Child surrounded by plain colored stonework while she herself was swathed in bright orange! I've never seen orange on the Virgin Mary, mostly because orange is the color of sex and creativity, and happens to be one of my favorite colors, partly for that reason but also because it looks good on me (see photo from just the previous day)! Not a color associated with virgins, another reason its a favorite!
I think the sculptor had the last laugh on someone a few centuries earlier!
e heart
thing.
Suddenly, I'm surrounded by Lions! Earlier this month, just after finishing this painting, I was in the French countryside in the home of people I've just met. There in pride (ha) of place is a large pen and ink of a lion's face very like the expression in my painting. Throughout the house there was more lion art and it turns out we were in the area of the last days of King Richard the Lionheart or "Coeur de Lion." Three days later I walk out of a restroom in the Hotel Lutetia in Paris and smack in front of me is an old etching of a lion. And now as I 'm writing this I'm in Italy staying at the Mount Lion Cultural Centre, with the small town of Monteleone just up the hill. I love life, its so magical! How can you go wrong when surrounded by strong courageous lions? Bon courage!
This is the first mandala that I have ever created. I used gouache on paper with gold acrylic. It's entitled "Seed of Life" because the pattern in the center is the sacred geometry symbol called the seed of life. Oddly, the center was the last bit that I painted, I wasn't sure what was going to go there. Even odder when it clicked that my surname "kern" means "seed," as in kernel.
The seed of life is a symbol for the seven days of creation, as it is comprised of seven circles. It is treated as a stage in the process of creation of the flower of life - a geometrical shape that symbolizes the whole universe. It helps to create new ideas and to open new pathways in life. I say, "bring it on!"
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