Californica
Title: Californica
original 12"x9" felt ink pen
on 60lb 98GSM acid free paper
A LIMITED EDITION FINE ART PRINT
OF THIS ARTWORK IS AVAILABLE FOR
Californica, or rather it's full scientific name: eschscholzia californica is more commonly known as the California poppy flower which serves as a central element in this piece. I created Californica while detained in Seattle during the pandemic. Months went by in 2020 and it was becoming more and more evident the temporary disruption to people travelling was more longer term. The distinctive orange flower started blossoming in north Seattle gardens and parking strips. I was immediately drawn to its rich vivid almost velvet orange texture and yet it is so delicate in form that its petals practically flutter like they will give way to the breeze and yet mysteriously seem to hold on. I found their movement in the wind under the sun inspiring. I include the flower again in the Summer Slumber artwork where I feature its softness under a bee which I discovered dozing one day inside one of a cluster of Californica flowers in a friend's garden.
I later learned the color orange is associated with the divine feminine. Reflecting on this allowed me to see the piece from a deeper level of consciousness. I realized a deeper truth desired to be expressed in me through the work; namely the association I was feeling with the symbolic move south which to me represents a geographic predominance where the more feminine cultures of our world thrive as opposed to the masculine industrialized and often more dominating northern parts of the world. I recognize a part of me yearns to connect and reflect in me my more feminine being and that to me, southern California is like how the German writer Thomas Mann felt about the southern parts of the world - places which his mother, a Portugese Brazilian, personified, encouraging the artistic creative in him in the face of the austere northern German industrialist father he grew up with in Lübeck, Germany.
Californica evoked in me much more than a love of the flower however. Rather it is representative of the felt experience of the state of California especially southern California which I associate as calling in me new chapters for the second half of my life. I deliberately play with a much more simpler style of my usual work to denote an airiness, freedom and enlightenment I've come to associate with my experience of California. The bird is the color of purple denoting my personal journey with consciousness which took me to the region in my trainings as a designer, artist, and coach. It is in the hills which are depicted in the piece which lie in the hinterland of Santa Barbara where I found also the Hendricks Institute, where I was accepted into the leadership and transformation program and where I study consciousness through body intelligence and relationships under mentors Drs. Katie and Gay Hendricks.