Title: Scrying
Medium: Pencil & Oil on canvas
Size: 140 x 78 cm
This painting was made with a technique I have discovered by reading posts from both Karl Zipser’s and Hanneke’s methods.
I have drawn directly from a combination of life and imagination on to the canvas, shading to some extent and completing it mostly.
When the drawing was absolutely right, then I covered the picture with thin layers of oil mixed with diluents to show some of the transparencies.
I finally overworked to the top leaving some parts of the pencil showing through and some other parts built up with colour and tone.
Angela,
The description of your process — the layering of glazes, over and over, to achieve the final fixed object, sounds to me a bit like scrying itself. I’ll admit I had to look up the word, but then I’ll admit that at one point in my life I had a birdbath that caught the westering sun and it was a kind of scrying place for me. No poppets or keys, though.
The underdrawing of the woman’s face is a bit scarier than the final painting, though. She looks a bit more distanced in the final image. I feel like I’m being told to pay attention, to look at the whirlpool, not to let my mind wander. I like the combo of the bright sunlight and the deep shadows of the background.
I think the painting technique is hard to appreciate from this web image, especially for someone like me who is not so familiar with it. I’d like to see it in person. In terms of painting effects, the areas I enjoy the most are the trees upper right and the rays in the sky.
I agree with June that the woman seems to be commanding us to look at the water (not giving us the option like Galadriel). Several features of the composition draw us to the basin, where it looks as if the dark water has an eye in it. That’s reinforced by way that the dark copper basin around the water echoes the hair around the woman’s face with its large eyes. The hair is also connected with the trees behind by color and sweep.
I also like the shadows on the landscape, but I’m not sure whether this is sunlight or bright moonlight. It does appear a bit warm on the grass, but elsewhere the light seems to have a more silvery quality, and the sky is dark. However, the lighting as depicted would require multiple sources; I don’t know if we’re to imagine what they might be or ignore the question as irrelevant in this very symbolic painting. I think I would like it to be more illusionistic, but that’s me.
I don’t like the white border the image has on the blog. I put it inside a medium gray border and it felt more alive and three-dimensional.
Reading your link, I learned that scrying is used in communicating with a magical partner. That reminded me of Roger Zelaney’s ‘Princes of Ambers’ who communicate via a pack of cards. The painting shown Wikipedia is different from yours. There, a young society woman is fully absorbed looking into a crystal ball. Here, the viewer is invited to participate in scrying.
A friend of mine (a man) calls shops that sell crystals and other items of parapsychology “women’s stores”. Is it more common for women to interest themselves in parapsychology?
Like Steve, I chose different color mats to surround your image, black, brown taken from the tree, green from the lawn, red and then greyish-purple taken from the sweater. Anything looked better than the white color surrounding the picture here on the post.
I like the slopes in the landscape. The lushness reminds me of England. The mowed, green lawn suggests that we are looking at a contemporary psychic.
Birgit,
Your observation — that we are being told to participate in bringing forth the prophecy — struck me as just right and startling as well. All my memories of images such as these — tarot cards, the art nouveau on Wikipedia — is of the oracle herself finding and bringing the truth to the specatators. I can’t remember any image in which we are told to see for ourselves.
When I imagine combining this sterm message with the broken landscape in Karl’s painting of mother and child, I think the political meaning would be very strong.
Angela,
I remember seeing an installation about scrying by Mary Tsongas. It was very memorable, not only because it was so well done, but because the topic was so unknown to me. You have good company.
In a fairly large room Mary had squarely placed 16 large steel industrial barrels. Pooled inside and brimmed was a dark liquid: oil, ink, etc? (Nearly everyone, while I was there, leaned down for a smell but without conclusion.) The barrels were actually mostly empty (further inspection revealed them actually upside down and the pool filling only that rimmed gap) which made the dark depths curiously shallow.
In the darkened room, Mary had projected onto the ceiling video images of mostly faint lunar images which mysteriously reflected off the placid, though sometimes slightly disturbed, dark surface. Such distortions were exciting. One pretty much knew what one was seeing but it was increasingly difficult to not want to see more. It was easier to understand how Mary’s grandmother (who was the inspiration for the work) applied meaning to such experiences.
June,
I am with you on this.
Beautiful work. I love the fact that you gave us a preview of the penciled sketch that you used as a backdrop to develop the painting.
Is she beckoning me to look into the dark well and see mysterious things?? What does the doll signify?
Like Steve pointed out before, the confusion between sunlight and moonlight remains – the shadows against the trees suggest the silvery feel of moonlight, but the ray suggest sunlight…
Angela,
Wow, I think we are seeing your dark side here! Beautiful composition, colors, atmosphere.