Butterfly Hand and More

Another hand painting. This one is I think my recent favorite. Again, in gold paint, which I am attracted to, lately. Maybe it's the religious icon connection, all those altar paintings of saints and angels.

It started out gold, and then I discovered the butterfly and wanted to use it and I had to figure out what would make it work. The green served as a good balance between the gold and the blue of the background. And once I started the scrolling, it just took off. I also wanted to add some of the gold in the background to integrate it more into the picture, but didn't really want to fill that with scrolls either. So stars seemed to fit the bill. And in a new move for me, I gave them halos of green. I didn't realize it would actually seem to be halos until I did it. So here's to experimenting.

I did want to use a night time setting, since I had just done a very day time, sunny one. Oh, alright. I'll post that one too, although it is not my favorite. It does use gold paint, though. Hmm. I am on quite the gold kick.What does it all mean?

I guess it speaks to the cyclical nature of life, the duality of yin/yang. Maybe that's it. The bright expression of the sunny times, times full of action and experience, tied together with the necessary shadow of night. Times of rest and introspection. Times of transformation.

I have always been drawn to the shadows. For me, they are not scary. They are not bad or sad, although there may be elements of all those negative aspects in them. I believe in the metaphor of the butterfly. While in the darkness of her cocoon, she goes through the huge transformation of becoming what she is meant to be. And breaking out of that cocoon is such hard work. Oh, it's such a struggle, but without that struggle, her wings never grow right, she doesn't gain the strength she needs to fly.

This is why I find such value in the shadows, the dark times, the constraints of life. They are the things that give us the strength and character to live up our potential. If I had not been raised poor, I would be a very different person. As it was, I learned to make something out of nothing. If I had not faced loneliness, I would not have learned to stand on my own two feet, or to let go of my walls. If I had not been rejected, I would not have known how much I wanted what I wanted... or what exactly it was. If I had not tried things that did not ultimately work out, I would not have had the skills for the next step. It is all valuable. Nothing is wasted. We are who we are, dark and light.