Gallery – Page 5 – Aspen Moon Art

Manipura, by Aspen Moon, September 2017. Acrylic on Canvas, 30″ x 30″ (Artist’s Collection). Second in the Chakra Series.

I started a new piece in my chakra series called Manipura, known by many as the Solar Plexus chakra, in Spring 2017 in preparation for my live painting performance at What the Festival, in June 2017 in Bear Run, Oregon. I had been working on the background so that’s it is ready to go come festival time. Below are a couple early photos of the work and where it’s going. Enjoy!

From WikiPedia: Manipura is considered the center of dynamism, energy, will power, and achievement (Itcha shakti), which radiates prana throughout the entire human body. It is associated with the power of fire and digestion, as well as with the sense of sight and the action of movement. Through meditating on Manipura, one is said to attain the power to create or destroy the world.

The position of Manipura is stated as being either behind the navel or the solar plexus. Sometimes, when it is located at the navel, a secondary chakra called Surya (sun) chakra is located at the solar plexus, whose role is to absorb and assimilate Prana from the sun. Being related to the sense of sight, it is associated with the eyes, and being associated with movement, it is associated with the feet.

In the endocrine system, Manipura is said to be associated with the pancreas and the outer adrenal glands (the adrenal cortex). These glands create important hormones involved in digestion, converting food into energy for the body, in the same way that Manipura radiates Prana throughout the body.

Chakras.net adds “The fire of the Manipūra Chakra is a sacred power. It is the flame of life into which the Yogi sacrifices not only his food, but also his conscious breathing (Prānāyāma). When we understand that the taking of food and oxygen are acts of giving not taking, then these activities acquire great spiritual significance.”

Energy and personal power have been my stumbling blocks for a number of years now. So this will be my active meditation for a while. Hoping the meditation creates an energetic shift in my life.

May 15 Update

I’m about 2 sessions away from having the background ready (enough) for WTF. I added orange last night:

Next, I’ll start working on building the patterns and templates that I’ll use to create the 10-pedaled lotus, which is a component of the symbolism of the Manipura. In addition, Sanskrit lettering to go on the pedals.

May 22 Update

With another weekend session I was able to get past a critical design decision and get some of the black in place (black is the actual background color). There will be one more session adding black before it’s done, but from these photos you can get a sense of where it is going. The more dark I add, the brighter the entire painting looks and it’s important to darken all the colors (saturate too) so that when I add the white over the top it will be visible and look bright.

In addition, I designed and built the final pattern for the 10-pedaled lotus that will sit on top of this (transparent white pedals) and Sanskrit lettering each pedal. I’ll paint all that stuff and the inner mandala at WTF, but I’m getting all the precise measurements dialed in and the patterns made ahead of time. This will speed up the process once I’m at the festival. I’m trying to condense what would normally take me weeks to do into the 3 days I’ll be working at the festival. I’m aiming to finish (or come close to finishing) the painting on the last day of the festival, which is Sunday, June 18. If all goes well, I’ll sign it on Summer Solstice 2017.

May 29 Update

More black, pushing things back. Also got the outer ring patterns measured, drawn, and ready to cut out. Spent about 15 hours working on this over the weekend. Only half of it shows up on the canvas right now. I’ll use a bunch of patterns I make ahead of time to save time and get more done at the festival.

Jun 28 Update

Well I wasn’t able to get the painting signed but it is getting very close. And I hope to have it done in the next couple of weeks (finish over July 4 holiday). For those who were at WTF, I’ll be offering a discount on prints of this work, once it is released. The festival was great and despite a couple days of rain in the beginning, I was able to make a lot of progress on the work and spent the better part of 3 days painting at the festival. It was a nice grove of trees to be working in, but a little removed from the main flow of the festival–next year I’ll ask to be by a stage if I go back.

Here are a few more photos of the platform I was working on as well as some photos of the Dream Collective Gallery where I had 4 more pieces hanging.

Finished work on the way!!

July 2 Update

I made a list of everything left to do to finish the painting and we’re down to about 13 things… I’m hoping it will be done by July 4th. Planning on working on it all day until it is done. Got the bhupura put into place, which will eventually be gold. Here are more photos:

August 6 Update

It’s so amazing when you’re about done with a painting and as you are doing your very last touches, you majorly screw up and destroy hours of work. This, alas, is what happened to me over the weekend. But I was able to recover ok–I learned long ago watching live artists that I admire that it’s ok to mess up and start over. In addition, when things like this happen, it is usually for the best. I was on the fence about my first attempt at the center plumeria flower, and whether it was good enough. Universe says it wasn’t and my repainting of the entire center part turned out much better that the first time. Practice. I won’t post again on this work until after the opening on September 8, where I’ll show it for the first time. In the meantime, here’s a photo of what it looked like after I covered the center flower and started over…and a signature!

Blessings!
–aspen. SLC.

Post Script: Finished August 14, 2017

Conversation with the Ancestors, by Aspen Moon, November 2014. Acrylic on Canvas, 20″ x 30″ (Private Collection)

Recently, the thought of the ancient past has been on my mind. Part of it could be the time of year. In Autumn, we naturally reflect on change, on reaping, and on cycles of life. It is traditionally a time of ancestor worship—as seen in holidays like Dia de los Muertos and Samhain. I’m also about to visit the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu and many other ancient sites of Peru, as well as spend time with Amazonian indigenous people who still have the same customs their ancestors lived for centuries. The lost knowledge and mystery of the ancestors has been in the forefront of my consciousness. It seems a natural instinct to want to seek wisdom when one encounters individuals or places of ancient wisdom.

But aside from megalithic walls or great pyramids, what could symbolize the idea of ancestor wisdom? Often we attribute the symbol of the skull to the idea of death. But to reflect on what a skull actually represents…one need only remember that every skull was created through life. Through the living of a life, which eventually ended yes, but was lived fully before that end. When I look at images of catacombs or burial places, or piles of bones, instead of seeing death I see lives. People. I wonder about their stories. Perhaps some of their lives ended violently. Perhaps they didn’t. Notwithstanding, each of those skulls, and bones, and fragments were once very alive. They were people—who laughed, and cried, and ate, and played games, and made children, and worried, and worked too hard, an danced, and fought, and slept, and dreamed… Their sounds and vibrations echo and resonate in places long after the physical forms are gone. I know this personally after visiting dozens of ruins and ancient sites throughout the US and overseas. Maybe there’s an echo of life even in bones long dried by time. Perhaps we could rethink the association of the skull to death symbolism and remember that a skull can only come into being through a full life first.

Therefore, using a skull to represent a wise old life, already lived seemed very good to me. As a reference, I used an image from the catacombs under Paris, which I chose because I liked the two uniquely shaped skulls. I then flipped the image to create the symmetrical design (and the human shaped keyhole). The idea was to have these skulls, which represented branches of the Ancestors, actually create the context for the other figure. As if the figure were entering caves that looked like giant skulls, larger than life, commanding and perhaps menacing. Ancestors no longer inhabit the physical world. This means the figure accesses them not through physical means, but through metaphysical means, which I represented with a magic carpet of sorts, built of lower chakra energy. The eyes of the Ancestors open the viewer to the vastness of the Universe. Through the eyes of the Ancestors one can perceive all things, be all places, and know all things.

The overall design hearkens a tree. This is an obvious reference to the both the Tree of Life and one’s family tree—which if you go back far enough, we all come from the same branch or trunk. We’re all related. Your Ancestors are my Ancestors. The figure stands as the base of the tree, forming the trunk, for aren’t we all the trunk of our own family tree? The burst at the top is formed by two interconnecting seed of life patterns, which is a two-dimensional way to represent the egg of life, which is the form a human zygote takes after three replications. It is also the form to represent the sixth or final day of creation in the Judeo-Christian axiom. The two forms together represent the complete masculine and feminine expression polarities that make each of us.

A tree needs both roots and branches to be strong. Much like we ourselves need in order to feel connected, rooted, stable, and strong. Could it be that the Tree of Life is actually our connections to each other, our heritage, and our humanity? Could it be that the Tree of Life is your DNA?

Part of this painting was completed in front of a live audience at the October 2014 Oogie Boogie event in Salt Lake City. It was also a private commission so it is unlikely there will be any reproductions or prints of this image.

-am. Nov 2014