Drawings of Animals, Persons and Phoenix

1 November 2019

This is a big post, mainly pictures, most of them drawings I did this year … with some story as it arose.

The sketches of endangered creatures in the Amazon rain forest were commissioned last January for a children’s book to raise awareness .  However they were not in the style which the author needed; so here they are for an airing.

The Amazon fruit bat wakes in Plato’s cave.  Can you see the snail? – (2018)

bespectacled bear comes out into the open – 2019

Doesn’t each creature tell a story of someone you know, or of yourself on this day or that?

spider monkey 2019

Here, he lets go …  Instant enlightenment is on call

poison dart frog 2019

but it isn’t quite … what the seeker expected to find?

giant amazon snail 2019

Very slow and steadily he made his way along the Path, feeling every element …

flying fruit bat 2019

until he could open his heart and fly home …

fruit bats resting 2019

… to rest upside down in the boundless with his friend.

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Now here are some family snaps:

man with cat 2018

man caving, birth 2018

my friend,  she sits like an eagle 2018

new generation: this is her dad, just back from the war. She’s in the pram  …  (2018)

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These sketches are from my earlier post with Shakti Rising:

Ramakrishna and Yantras – 2019

Sarada Devi wife of ramakrishna (1994)

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I found this on a friend’s bedroom wall when I went on a visit – I had forgotten all about it.

My father’s afternoon nap – circa 1972

peter (my father) in devon –  2019

Brave bears …

and a fox at dawn:

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Copy from Botticelli; the winds are angelic forces – birth of Aphrodite 2019

this old sketch turned up of Douglas and Catherine Harding – perhaps 1996.  They are built open for each other. They tell friends to “See” who they really, really are,  like birds on the wire.

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Hand mudras – sacred gestures 2019

I went for a walk and met a beautiful nose on four legs

Arthur Koestler 2019 – an old mentor

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Here is a story:

Celebrate Nyousha (1997-2019), 2019

In August this year, we held a wake for Nyousha. She was only 22, the cancer started when she was 17. She wrote in her diary that each day, each moment holds the potential to make a change in the world; her courageous statement of living and loving more intensely through her death.  She was a feminist and an activist; she deeply searched her soul.  This young Persian artist had to die just as she grew up and opened wide. Her radiance illumined and inspired her loved ones.  Nyousha is among us.  She is grieved; and yet she is free.

In the Phoenix Community house in North London, I have my art room. The fur of old Kabbalist visionary was removed from my room for the weekend, and replaced with the young girl’s vibrant life for her family and all their friends to come and see; her exhibition, her gallery, her soul. We hung her work also all around the house.  About 300 people feasted in the garden and there was music.  Afterwards her brother carefully put my infrastructure back where it was.  My life made room for one whose adult life only began.

Today writing this post and uploading my portrait of her, I  discover it is her birthday: 1 November.  In Scorpio’s depth today, Mercury pauses to rest on one foot before re-winding the spiral backward. Hence, I reflect further …

Zoroastrian rock phoenix

Creative work supports the soul in yet another miracle of reality.  In shock and acceptance, the phoenix turns, ascends within and sings the outrageous alchemical moment in the heart and in Sol.

On hearing it’s her birthday, I got out my colours and struck for Nyousha this coin:

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Sketch of Nyousha & a climbing stretch – 2019.

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woman running with wolf – 2019

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Here now are a few sketches of climbers – always an amusing allegory with conditions of pilgrimage, ascension, meeting our Shadow, call it what you will.  We help each other:

Momo Freehill, bouldering 2019

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Climbing at the Castle Centre 2019.  That is me, near the spectacles, belaying my daughter.

Self and dropped knee/chimneying …

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… and herons, from a small book I just completed, about an artist I met when I was 16 – there are experiential roots of Islamic and Hebrew calligraphy:

Heron 2 2019

Alif aleph yod heron 2019

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My grandfather, copied from a black and white photograph by Richard Poussette Dart which I found in a book at Kettle’s Yard.  I was deeply impressed with the way Poussette Dart portrays him as a working mystic.

Jim Ede from a photograph by Richard Poussette Dart 2019

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More of the climbing companions.  This oak tree grew out of a sheer gritstone rock face in Yorkshire.

climbing on Agdon Rocher 2019

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Tom on the  slabs

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Back home, my Rilke gallery begins to grow!

Rilke 3

Lou Salome and Rainer Maria Rilke 2019 

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Procession – 2018

And: my journal today. I want to say again (not didactically) that when I am deeply reflective, it appears to me that we humans are within a genetic matrix which is creating a new Aquarian symbiosis. The animal kingdom is under threat of extinction by the present human imbalance.  Yet, looking at the countless small initiatives to protect and conserve a species and restore it to its habitat, I see the birth of a kind of care which did not exist when the beasts and birds were our plentiful hunting ground or amusement.  Against the ravages still being made against nature, human conscience in her depth strata expands the palette, embracing our shadows with the dawn.

Care and respect for the animals includes “the soft animal of our body” and  soul within us, in all its beauty.

My daughter Marisa with her cat when he wasn’t well

For me, Gaia is not the earth-being alone – for we are not separate.  Gaia is our conscious human-earth relationship: to care.  The breakthrough comes where hope seems to be lost.  The condition is unbearably painful before I agree to pause, turn and evolve – individually as collectively. Nothing can prevent the evolutionary cosmos in the DNA.  The evolution proceeds at all levels interwoven: spiritual through psychological to the instinctual body and her seasons; the plant, mineral and subatomic universe.

A phoenix rises from the ashes to our call: transfiguration.

As the sun rises over the horizon it throws long sharp shadows across the field.  These confront us in our world at present.  Pluto’s movement through Capricorn de-constructs old institutions to make room for new birth.  Watching life in the cauldron, as hologram, I observe these basic principles time and time again through the chaos.  Since 2012 particularly, we are required to embody the ageless wisdom and to get real: our boots on the ground.  As the linear convention of time changes its nature, so emerges in both men and women the feminine, the unconditional rejoicing creature within us who flowers and gives birth.

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Sleeping swan (1988). Her nose is where she flies

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2019. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/