Phoenix: a legendary bird which, according to one account, lived 500 years, burned itself to ashes on a pyre and rose youthfully alive from the ashes to live another period…a symbol of immortality.
For over two years prior to this series, extremely trying circumstances in my personal life all but destroyed the creativity in my soul. Then, miraculously, like the legendary bird, this series of watercolors rose from the ashes of my life and reassured me that my art could love yet another period.
The series also marks the return of the figure in my painting. For more than 20 years now, abstraction and non-objective expression of moods and feelings have been the hallmark of my work. Within this context, through the years, there have been periods when the “feel” of landscape developed, periods when the figure emerged and periods when symbolism became important. Such references to “reality” have never been engineered or forced into being by my conscious mind but rather have emanated from the deeper wellsprings of the Unconscious and have thus been statements of the Spirit.
For nearly 10 years now, one of my major concerns has been to find a visual means of expressing the Life Force inherent in the Universe. One day, while watching water and pigment flow and coalesce on wet paper, I was struck by the possibility of this phenomenon’s offering an answer to my search. The interaction seemed so alive, so teeming with some Force greater than just paper, paint and water. Exciting experiments followed. Eventually a technique evolved which intensified the flow and crystalized the movement. The glimpse of arrested motion gives a sense of some mysterious and dynamic force at work.
As the figure began emerging in this captured energy, a sense of the mystery of the Life Force and its powerful influence on all things has remained my dominant theme by purposefully allowing only partial development of the “known” (the figure) within the visualization of the “Unknown.”
As my pursuit of ways to search out, make manifest and perhaps even understand these many mysteries continues, I dream of eventually finding significant answers to the universal Quest…the search for Meaning…as Van Gogh put it. “Who we are, where do we come from, where are we going?”
Verna Brady
Phoenix 7
Phoenix 15
Phoenix 27
Phoenix 17
Phoenix 29
Phoenix 7
Phoenix 31
Phoenix 36
Phoenix 45
Phoenix 11
Phoenix 6