The Dynamis, Angels of movement, can be experienced in all outer movements of water, clouds, wind etc. but also in fluidity of thinking and inner flexibility of feeling. They can also help us to get unstuck, move us out of stagnant situations of rejection, longing, disappointment and inability to serve. Their impetus to move helps us to form new connections to others, eases our thinking into new concepts and weaves a radiant net of interconnectedness of relationships that restore our sense of purpose and future. They could also be called angels of hope.
In working with this painting, the Dynamis were recognized as masters of connection, as forces of levity rising above circumstance and a wonderful transcendency of existence.
The Exusiai are the creators of all forms and formative forces in nature and humans, organizing and designing all aspects of physical appearance. They are the creators of all of earth evolution and give the human beings their I or ego. They dwell in the region of the sun and are also associated with Scorpio.
In my Seven Elohim Series from 2016 (six paintings of which are hanging in the front gallery) I explored the activities of the angels of form and how they might manifest.
Some geological formations can be particularly expressive of the powerful forces of form active in our environment. The small island of Staffa with its hexagonal basalt columns and dramatic interaction of sea and rock in the Inner Hebrides is a striking, powerful and majestic manifestation of Exusiai activity in geology that found its way into this painting as a compositional substrate. Hardly ever have I experienced the power of form as strongly as on Staffa.
The Cherubim live in the light of our thinking. The age-old wisdom they have gathered throughout all of time, streams towards us in their presence. They are the voice of conscience and high bearers of light.
From my work:
Twice I had a visionary experience of a shimmering light-space that expressed the activity of the angels of harmony, beckoning the viewer to enter into an immaterial, interweaving, sacred, and radiant space. From a painterly perspective that meant I had to come up with a technique that would be like “making lace” and superimposed layers of luminosity. I thought of distant stars and trickles of light. Accordingly, the soul is free to widen as it fathoms the light, while a sheen gradually spreads over everything.
Archangels are the creators of light and live in the love filled element of the air. They protect groups of people and entire nations. The best known of the Archangels are the Angels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel.
From my work on this painting:
I wanted to depict how the archangels are givers of light and are grouped around the sun, reflecting the light back to the center from the far reaches of the cosmos.
Archai are bearers of cosmic intelligence and spirits of the ages. They exercise power of thought and dwell in the realm of ancient Saturn.
The imagination for this painting arose before my inner eye whilst sitting in the Abbey on the sacred island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. I painted the imagination exactly how I saw it with the spirals at the center of the towering uprightness of these beings with the world below them at their feet. They came across as sublime angels - sounding guardians of time and stern strength.
Angels and Guardian Angels accompany us throughout our entire lives. They are associated with the watery element and life forces and their cosmic domain is the lunar sphere.
From my work:
I wanted to honor and celebrate my personal guardian angel with this painting, trying to get to know it better and make a deep connection in an attempt to perceive and understand it more clearly. I used earth from the garden of the house where I was born in Korbach, Germany, and very fine earth from Utah to represent the American aspect of my biography. I fused them with water into the compositional substrate of this painting to represent my current German/American earth journey that is accompanied by my guardian angel. Opening my inner perceptions to the possible essence of my guardian angel, I arrived at the conclusion that gold and a fresh pink were the main colors of this being. I perceive my Guardian Angel as an intimate best friend within the sacred space of the heart, buoying me upwards and shimmering through and through. The angel sphere is both sounding and whispering, showing itself in the swinging movements of the heart-folds of love.
As soon as we went into lockdown in March of 2020 I knew I had to paint with red/magenta. I knew I had to transition red into the light. Red as the color of life and death, love, great presence, the color of transition from stages of light to stages of dark and vice versa (sunrise/sunset) the color of budding, pushing new life of emerging plants in spring. Red is a fighter, victorious, triumphant, life affirming and a big presence. It moves us to the core. In this apocalyptic time of great dying, of so much loss on so many levels I turned to the Apocalypse of St. John to see how it all ends. In the Apocalypse it does eventually all end well. I focused my meditative inquiry on the sentence: “I am the shining morning star” from the very last page of the revelation every day before I painted. Whatever radiance I could generate with great concentration I then sent out into the world to help everybody everywhere. Waves and waves of it. This painting lingers in a shimmering sacred space with nodal points of joy in a vast inner ocean anchoring radiance into the world. Once a day one has to ignite the soul into radiance so that thousands of stars are singing in her.