An Artist’s Search for the Secret of the Sky Goddess JONATHON EARL BOWSER The LotusMaiden Published by JonathonArt.com A Limited First-Edition of Fifty Books Copyright © 2008 Jonathon Earl Bowser All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Manufactured in Canada Includes Bibliography ISBN: ??? 2 Dedication For Alphonse Mucha and Thomas Moran, who taught me about painting; For Carl Sagan and Joseph Campbell, who taught me about thinking; For my Mom, my Dad, and my Wife, who taught me everything really important that I understand about the world... 3 The LotusMaiden 4 Table of Contents Dedication 3 Final Thoughts 238 Table of Contents 5 Still Falling from the Hidden Country 248 Introduction 7 Appendix I: Incarnations of the Goddess of Many Names 252 Goddess of the Vale 12 Sanctuary 16Appendix II: Cascade 18Incarnations of the Tectonic Builder 276 Goddess of the Tides 22 Invariance and Enlightenment 26 Bibliography 292 Blue Invariance 30 Earth Autumn Winter 32Photo Credits 294 Song of the Hummingbird Muses 36 Isis - Child of Earth and Sky 40 About the Artist 296 Angel of Capricorn 44 The Journey thus Far 48 Order and Chaos 50 The Blue and the Red 66 Pastoral Symphony 68 The Return 76 Celestial Apparition 86 A Beckoning Light 92 The Awakening 96 Forest Light 114 Ancestors 128 Eurynome and Ophion 130 Desire 134 Waiting for Parsival 136 Forest Mist 140 Tears of Waialeale 142 RiverGenesis 146 LotusWood 148 Cathedral of Illusion 162 Children of Eternity 188 Transcendeffervescence 192 Lotus of the Eternal Night 196 Tending the DragonSleep 200 Parsival’s Lament 204 Cloak of the Maternal Sky 230 Matrix of Eternity 236 5 The LotusMaiden 6 Introduction trillion-trillion electron-volts, the Big unrealistic (or even foolish, many would say) to Bang, and the stupefying immensity of expect a painting to have that kind of explanatory Aspace-time: it came from something or it power, but writing helps me - to clarify and focus came from nothing...and both propositions seem my creative objectives. This personal inclination, equally absurd. It is no simple matter to fi nd however, need have no bearing whatsoever on meaning in the baffl ing beauty and horror of the your experience of these artworks. These writings world… are important only in as much as they have made a signifi cant contribution to the evolution of these * * * images. They are included here to document that process. And if, when viewing a particular image, hat follows is a collection of artwork, you fi nd yourself wondering just what the heck and a few words of description about I’m trying to say, you may fi nd the companion Wthis artwork. If the imagery herein is writings edifying - and perhaps even interesting. interesting to you, then I invite you to enjoy these I am often similarly asked what these paint- paintings as they are, without further reference to ings are about, and the answer to that question is any other material present in these pages. View- also what this book is about. Joseph Campbell, ing instructions are not required, and you can and the great scholar of comparative mythology, once should interpret these images - or not - according observed, “The best things cannot be told, the to your own natural inclination. I strongly believe second best are misunderstood. After that comes that art is the resonance that happens between a civilized conversation…” As I write these words, painting and an observer; it is only when people I have been working alone for about 25 years now, are able to bring their own life-experience to a and I confess that my skills with “civilized con- picture that meaning can enter into it. My under- versation” are rarely used and not well developed. standing of a particular picture may not be relevant Alone in my studio, hunched over my easel all day to a different but equally valid understanding. every day, I am free to ponder, at considerable I am often asked, as I suppose most art- length, these mysterious best things, and how to ists are, where I get my ideas. Inspiration is a portray them. Musings on such lofty matters in- diffi cult concept, and I’m not really sure where evitably tend to the pompous and self-important; it these images came from, but many of them were is indeed presuming a great deal to suppose we can discovered in my search for conceptual patterns know much more than our own mind, but surely it that make apparently dissimilar kinds of things is legitimate to ask a deeper version of the simple also, in some unexpected way, strangely similar. what-is-it question we routinely ask of every other Perhaps it is because the job requires me to spend thing we encounter: What is the cosmos and what so much time alone (and solitary people can make am I? Answers to beguilingly big questions are friends with strange things), but I delight in fi nd- not easily told, but my contemplations, visual and ing a secret bridge between distant ideas. I am literal, fi ll these pages in an attempt to examine fascinated by the mysterious repetition of common and understand the nature and philosophy of God- motifs and patterns that appear in the natural world dess Mythology in the Age of Science. around us, in our behavior and biology, in our That sounds like a contradiction in terms: societies and religions, and even in the ethereal in contrast with the crude Neolithic mentality worlds of mathematics and physical law. Seeking from which Goddess mythology fi rst emerged, to understand these mysterious connections is an the modern world now possesses vast knowledge integral part of my creative process. It is perhaps about neural processes and perception, nature and 7 The LotusMaiden evolution, the world and the universe - an under- inevitably affects our perceptions of it. And so standing of natural systems unimaginable to our art is, I suppose, a fl eeting glimpse of something ancestors. The Goddess spirituality dreamt up by eternal and beyond...seen through the broken glass early planter cultures about 10,000 years ago is a of an artist’s life. comparatively simple way of thinking - uselessly I wanted to make images that would ad- limited, many would say. What possible message dress the questions I have about the world - and can stone-age primitives have for we sophisticated maybe even answer a few of them. It seems to me inhabitants of the nuclear/space/information age? that there are only two primary modes of inquiry And can this ancient way of thinking fi nd any new available. One is directed into the world - science inspiration in the 21st century, any reason to en- - and asks questions like “What is the world made dure and yet enrich our experience of the world? of and how can we bend it to our purposes?” The I believe it can, as I hope to show. other is directed beyond the world - religion - and The artworks in this collection defy easy asks questions like “Where did the world come classifi cation. They often have a landscape, but from and what is it for?” Both modes of inquiry they are not just simple landscapes. They have are equally valid, equally essential, but the tools fi gures, but they are not classical fi gurative works of one mode are invalid in the other. One system in the academic meaning of the term. Some distills down to the fundamental assertion that people call such works fantasy, but I dislike that “the world came from nothing,” and the other to description also because it seems to exclude any “the world came from something” - it’s a leap of thoughtful examination of the “real” world - which faith in either direction but you can’t jump both I certainly endeavor to do, albeit with images that ways. Science and religion, it seems, are bound do indeed seem, at fi rst glance, rather unlike the like the circumference and radius of a circle: some usual world of common experience. The term “vi- intimate bond clearly obtains, but the irrational sionary art” is somewhat accurate, in the sense that relation between them prevents you from defi ning these images are derived from insights of some one with the terms of the other; you can pursue kind, but the word visionary is burdened by the one mode of thinking or the other, but a deep un- baggage of its wider overuse in matters not at all derstanding of both is not possible. related to art. I do like the term “spiritual art”, and The world is obviously here, and both sides feel the closest creative kinship with those ancient agree it wasn’t always, so some cause made it. traditions of imagination seeking to see beyond One view says “God made the World,” the other sight, reach beyond the limits of rational sensory asserts that “Natural Processes made the World” cognition, to the supporting forms and ideas upon - and each then asks of the other, “but where did which the material world precariously dances. this mysterious cause of yours (god or natural pro- Five hundred years ago in the high renaissance, art cess) come from?” Neither frequently blustering was the contemplation of nature and the struggle opinion addresses the philosopher’s intractable of life and death, amplifi ed in the collision of gods but inescapable question: Why is there something and demons. I too am pondering that same cosmic rather than nothing? I believe it is the artist’s job drama and unseen wellspring of creation, fi nding to build bridges between these distinct and limited inspiration in the spiritual traditions of East and modes of inquiry - the mythic and the naturalistic.