A very difficult mother complex was something I had to come to terms with in my life. My mother suffered from alcoholism and later dementia. In my own life I had to come to terms with those parts of the mother that had become internalized, part of my own personality. I had a dream that my mother was in a bloody underground cavern. She was a giant spider, a symbol of the negative mother par excellence. In the eyes of the spider I put two drawings of my mother in her hospitalization.
Mad Mother Realm
1999
Pencil and watercolor on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
The breakthrough for me came when I had a dream that my mother and I were swimming in a river with the dismembered bodies of lepers. In the Bible Neumann the leaper, is cured by bathing in the Jordan. In alchemy “the leprosy of the metals” refers to problems in the process. My mother had always kept a stone from the Jordan River in her ivory reliquary box; so the idea of bathing in the river had a second meaning for me. In the dream we were both bathing in the same river, are part of the same complex. In India there is a huge pilgrimage called the Kumba Mele festival where millions bath in the Ganges. There is also a wonderful fresco in a convent in Rome that shows Constantine bathing in a tub, as a cure. The bathing in the river is healing but also represents a kind of baptism. For me the dream led to a breakthrough and a path out of the negative mother complex and the depression. The waters became luminous and shining. Like blue butterfly wings. I was able to dump a lot of the negative traits, and a new attitude could come forth.
Washing the Leprous Mother in the Jordan River
2000
Pencil and water color and gold paint on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
The child represents new possibilities in dreams and visions. In a symbolic way Christ as a child represents spirituality and renewal in the individual as well as the collective. Erich Neumann has written a wonderful book on the archetype of the child. In Lunar Birth, I saw myself as a child in a lamp, some glowing inner child I had never been allowed to be. My childhood was very dark. In the drawing the crows, which symbolize depression, are departing. Processional with Light Bringer also has the image of the child as a light bringer.
Lunar Birth
2000
Pencil and watercolor and gold paint on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
Processional with Light Bringer
2005
Cast bronze with silver crown
19” by 7’2”
Sanctuary came from a dream and an experience I had in India. In the dream I was holding my mother like the Christ in the Pieta across my lap. After many years of being angry I was able to understand her life and empathize and forgive her. She had had a tortured existence with the suicide of her brother and the death of another brother from the fall off a cliff. Her life had not been easy. To give up all resentments and anger is I feel an important step in everyone’s development.
Sanctuary also comes from an experience I had in the temple at Ranachpur in India, one of the great Jain temples in the world. The Jains are one of the oldest religions in India. They believe in forgiveness and incorporate it in a confessional festival called Perysiana where all Jains spend nine days contemplating forgiveness as well as in a daily ritual. The experience in the temple was what a religious writer would call a “peak experience”. I felt that an inner sanctuary had become mirrored in this outer sanctuary. More amazing still is that the plan for the Ranakpur temple came from one man’s dream.
Sanctuary
2002
Pencil and watercolor on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
The last work in the Series, White Birth, also came from a dream. I see babies everywhere on a floating sea. I am riding a white horse and there is a Roman ship on the waters. I had seen an alchemical illustration with vials containing babies. The dream was rife with new birth, new energy (horse power), and poetic inspiration. The boat suggested a new voyage.
