Scorpio – The Tree of Life and the Androgynous Man
The wisdom teachings refer to the manifested creation as an inverted tree. In the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says: “The whole Creation is an inverted tree. The roots are up above, the branches are down below”. The branches (manifestations) of Nature are downward, towards the gross matter, and the roots (causes) are above, in the subtler planes. The wisdom teachings describe the downward movement into objectivity as female (Nari), and the ascending movement as male (Nara). Both movements together form the cosmic person, Narayana.
We are just in the month of Scorpio. Socrpio has to do with profound transformation, with going through the depth of matter and the chance of turning back to the spirit. As a starting point of this painting to the month of Scorpio, I took a picture of snow-capped Tibetan mountains reflecting in a lake, and I digitally warped the mountains into a downward u-form. At the top I placed a tree as the original “idea” of the tree. It is projected downwards into the lake, the inverted tree of creation. I took a photo of the Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da Vinci, took away the extra arms and legs and integrated him into the tree. His head is penetrated by the roots from the upper tree – receiving the ideas from cosmic dimensions. Then, I extracted the Venus from a photo of Botticelli’s famous painting “The Birth of Venus” and fused her, downwards, into the Vitruvian Man, thus creating the male-female Androgyn. I worked on the painting with pencils. I transformed a photo of the roots of a tree and put them, pointing downwards, in several faint layers around the upper tree: The roots are in the blue space at the top, the manifestation of the tree extends below.
You might like to have a look at my other paintings.
16 July 2013, A 5, pencils and photo work
