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Religious: Acrylic on Canvas

 

 

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painting david ben miriam

"David ben Miriam":acrylic on canvas by Susan Risk


David ben Miriam

After a fair amount of meditation in religious circles, I was curious about the stories about Jesus and many figures from Old and New Testaments of The Holy Bible.

In the belief that I had experienced seeing history (the newborn "David ben Miriam", born to be King and called Jesus) I started wondering how Mother Mary looked, and also, how she must have experienced as a terribly young person.

In my minds' eye, I could see that she was a short little girl,and that the story about her Immaculate Conception was probably quite accurate.

I saw images of the newborn child, and also of an adult David ben Miriam (Hebrew:"David, son of Mary")

I tried to unite my glimpses of the child Mary with the child Jesus.

What is Mystical/Religious Art?

What I saw of the Holy birth was that Mary did indeed have to stay in a stable when in labour. I could see that she stepped into a large cloth bag (the equivalent of an antique sleeping bag) and that this protected herself and baby from the animals' conditions.

I used myself as an anatomical life model, and also the aura of the birth of my own son to express the actual birth process.
You cannot see the electrical brilliancy of this, due to a bad slide, but the babys' umbilicus is surrounded by a dazzling white, spiralling aura of thousands of rays, as he is born.

I, myself, call images of the aura "Realism", however this type of work is usually called "Mystical".

When I had set out to paint the Virgin Mary, though, it was to illustrate an impression of her corporeal aura (the light of a bodys' nerves).

I wanted to show the spiritual gladness and brilliant energy of brand new birth. I wanted to show Mary as anywoman, and the holiness of birth as anybirth.

I believe that, in working with the flow of light, and in painting white light haloes around mother and child, that I have conveyed the sensibility of little Mary, a Mother.

Also Protest Art

I am a modern woman, with University credits in Theology.

When I set out to make a "Punk Art series of Valentines, I slanted my pieces to also express the sardonic, to make people awaken beyond cultural hypnosis or stagnancy.

I did not know where my heart would take me in elaborating a somewhat naiive craving for more love and romance.

As I approached the beloved, in my thoughts and experiential sorting of values, it was to find woman as mother (symbolized by little teen Mother Mary) and my own motherhood as a central core of my love nature.

I am no Mariologist, and I wanted to modernize what I disliked in Christian religious thinking. I wished to make the experience of birth a realistic, living experience, and to throw puritanism out, replaced by what was most likely the right action of the original event.

Our modern society watches childbirth on television. Childbirth is as natural as dawn and sunset. A woman giving birth is all woman. She does not exist as an unreachable, stiff virtue in a corner of a church- she is grunting, sweating and screaming. Still, she loves that child with all of her faith, and all of her heart.

My protest was not expressly punker, but the blood of afterbirth, the vagina, and the action of birthing were shown to evoke more compassionate, mature, and less dualistic thinking about mothering, sexuality and definitely, about womankind.

donated to Norfolk Street United Church, Guelph,ON.

Love

"Blood of My Blood": Valentine Series,acrylic on canvas. by Susan Risk


Blood of My Blood

from a poem that I have edited into a copyright work (#471696)about a religious leader (entitled Blood and Milk,it begins...):


"Blood of My Blood,
You are the salt,
the waves,
and the ever-sand shifting.."

It was with zeal and passion that my love for medicine and for the beauty of our bodies came together into this painting.

My inspiration was from a Doctor of Naturopathy, whose vision and experience were, to say the least, beautific with regard to the function of the heart and tissues of the body.

When I first celebrated his vision of the heart, it was with an enormous tulip. My analogy was not perfected, but I satisfied an urge to share expanded vision. With my next attempt, I let go, and employed a number of concepts within a very lively and warm piece.

My main theme is a comparison to red and white corpuscles- the rose petals suffice. A large central petal offers an idea of the human heart as an organ. My underlying theme is a search for "the rose that never withers". At the time, to me, a rose that will never wither was just LOVE. I painted a glass rose, to symbolize a permanent "rose", or love that is never-ending.

A little irony came into the work when I decided to wrap the rose.

Bundling, containing, seeking immortality, some of these concepts are full of negative connotation. I mummified my rose. I bundled it and said it could not be anything but preserved. But then I painted a crystal rose- a symbol of the open, loving soul, transcended from boundaries and psychological modes of embalming. My love concept is of ever-reshaping humanity, to which I own blood ties of all natures. My love concept is of the Creator, a great Love.

My many transparent silk ribbons represent the pathways to love, and the vascular system. They flow around, over and into deep rich red light- the colour of longevity. They represent, also, the softness and silkenness of an awakened body, in good health.

Only around the glass rose are they bandaging and tying an object.

The rose petals circulate in a richness of both random motion and coherent purpose.

More of the poem to match:

..."And oh around my blood shell yours
Stitched in tined coralling
Oh around my blood shell yours
Shin - ing my new song
Shining our name

ADM
The door to the wind and the sea
ADM
The door to the wind and the sea
Adhamma the song of the wind and the sea.



painting traded to McPherson Gallery, Almonte.

tulips

"Tulips": four foot acrylic on canvas by Susan Risk



Tulips

When I purchased my spring flowers at a local florist, it was my intention to paint the hugest tulip that I could, given my tiny budget of fifty cents!

The work is in celebration and open admiration of a very great Naturopath, who saw the heart as an organ as if a ten foot translucent tulip petal.
Having the same delicate sense of the human body has become my goal.


this poem holds some of the values that, to that fine healer, were a true reality. It was written not about him, but desirously, by myself to myself.

"To All Vision Be Wed" by S. Risk, 1976

Oh! The curiosity that is
not tainted
with knowledge
deeming the subject
vulgar or proper -

Lsting innocence sings
from only sparrows and wild things

And to all vision be wed,
And all Justice see
As all hearing sound
And all stillness be
And all feeling -
Rub Thyself against Thyself!

Earth I cannot deny you.
Earth I could not deny you.



included in copyright work #471696: "Meeting Ananda Bodhi -Heavenly Enlightenment"


art owner: Paul Aubin