Paintings 2015 - Gallery
Birth of Self
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 40x30 inch
Story:
This painting is telling the story of the birth of self, woven by the hands of earth and fed by drops from the well of sky.
The hands are emerging from the incarnating power of our sustaining ground. Its will is its anchoring solidity.
The well of sky personifies man's perpetual goal of fulfillment and excellence, which is the humans’ eternal aim, from the moment of birth on this earth.
Nevertheless, the man remains shattered between his skies and his ground, bound to his ever unfinished look, but yet full of expression and grace beyond all its schisms.
Demons' Reunion
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 30x24 inch
Story:
This is a painting about the world beyond our faces and eyes, beyond our proofs of shape and our desire to determine what is the obvious and the worthy to be solidly displayed in our sight as the world and what is not. It is the world behind the veil of the evidence. This painting is a story about a demon's reunion, sharp and charged faceless expressions dominating the scene of their embrace. The painting is made with a combination of transparent layers of colors, allowing the light to bring perspective into this multi-focal scene. Although they are presented only as un-unified personas, forever masks, without bodies or faces, the demons hold their place in reality through the force of their intent and in this scene, that intent is the reunion.
However mysterious the goal of their reunion may be, we still have the intuition making us aware of their complex bonding.
Outer space flowers
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 16X20inch
Story:
This painting is about flowers suspended by an unknown force in outer space, gently integrating their shadowy beauty within the depth and infinite mystery of the outer space.
The Divine Ass
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 30X24inch
Story:
This is a painting about one of the most exhilarating human archetypes of all times.
We are somehow trapped in its crushing gravity field, remaining always in its seducing proximity, even when we are trying to walk away from its lure, either by denying it, ignoring it, accepting it or transcending it. The shadow of the monk is pictured leaving, trying to rise above its electrifying grip, but his face remains slightly turned back, still charmed, and some might even say ensnared, by the echoes of this pillar of life.
Forest of Gods
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 24X36 inch
Story:
I call this painting the Forest of Gods – it is a painting about an allegorical forest of magic candle-trees, anchored with their sinuous psychic roots in the dark night of life. A vivid moon (the symbol of the enlightenment – far above and distant) is shedding its mysterious light on this scene, which is not belonging to any time or space. Just as the darkness is present and felt, so too is the feeble light of the noon. With the little light we have, we can visit from far this place and a strange scenery unfolds.
Archetypes of gods are seen in each candle flame, they are growing in the light of each candle-tree, in a different way for each of them.
A certain brightness apparently comes from the light generated by these god-like silhouettes; however, another truth lurks in the shadow of these manifestations. It’s the beings trapped in these candle-trees, populating these strangely living paradigms, who (the beings trapped) are feeding this light into each god-like figure. Even more, it's their enchained being itself, their commitment to their cages, the acceptance of their own existential conditioning, their complicity with their own darkness and light, their play in this game that is actually what enlightens their gods. It’s their fights and defeats, their own astonishment and bewilderment and their quest for peace which are defining the god that was created in the night of their existence.
It's them determining which light is surrounding their own Gods and how far deep this light pierces their night. But only some of the trapped are able to transmit enough force through their own spiritual candle-trees to light them up, to make them burn; there are others, further into this forest which are mere shadowy stems, the possibility of non-existence having taken over after they fell from their own existences for mysterious reasons; they are empty, we cannot see anyone being inside, even trapped, no light, no sense of hope, only the smoke of their demise.
The god-like figures, religious and non-religious, are the embodiment of the fears, hopes, nightmares and dreams of the souls attached to their cages. The light of enlightenment is the radical exit from this night and the liberation from the perverted need to always personify our psychic content and coagulate it in shape of icons.
On another note, a powerful thought that must catch our attention by following the meaning of this painting is that the divine and our gods (which are the mere representations of these god notions) are very different realities.
This painting implies different layers of meaning and more than one conclusion. Other paintings will follow in this series to continue this amazing story.
Visions of a Shaman 1
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 40x30inch
Story:
The painting Visions of a Shaman1 is the first in a series with the same name talking about shamanic visions and the whole spiritual universe surrounding the shamanic rituals within this very particular model of existence.
The shaman is blindfolded, seated, in the middle of his visions, which are springing out of himself, vividly, carnally intense , connecting him with the soul of all things.
The shaman’s blindfolding symbolizes that he doesn’t need his eyes to grasp the light of the universe, to have the sight of things. The reality itself is the outcome condensing out of his visions.
His head is an anchor of the sky, sky which is talking back to him, in shapes yet unseen. The sky is dramatic, charged with a strange solidity, as if it were entrusting its whole weight to the shoulders of the shaman.
Even blindfolded, the shaman perceives the archetypal woman born out of the whirlwinds of sky, which are in the same time the consciousness winds; we can notice the intense complicity between the two.
The language that he is manifesting through his visions is materialized through imagery, which is actually carrying their mystical meanings, instead of the words that used to do that, which are at this point an insufficient vehicle to transit this psychic world.
In a manner of speaking, we are the prisoners of our spoken languages, as they are restraining the meanings of our world, our access to them and the creation of other ones, exhaustive at a higher level, more powerful. This alter language is totally alive, limitless and it's showing itself beyond the encryption of the classical idioms of semantics.
This painting is bringing out the light from these unspoken metaphors of this new language.
The Psychedelic Clown
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 24x24inch
Story:
The painting I've started to present a few days ago is telling the story of the clown. One about his existential condition, a marginal one, hanging somehow between the acts of others like between foreign worlds, between the suppression of an action and the mere answer to one. Or better said, his actions themselves are always in a reactive state, either we think about the clown doing his act between the shows of the other main artists at the circus or the clown figure at the noble courts, where, even if close to the noble, king or emperor, he was a mere protrusion of the truth through its hilarious acts and not the voice of the truth. One that would have been real, only had the others have accounted of it seriously. It's the idea of a truth that is a joke not only in disguise, but as its true nature, a truth that is born through its own parody and it is so ridiculous that it cannot possibly matter for more than a laugh or a push away.
But the duality of this clown figure continues.
The marginal condition is always in balance with another one, the one of the mysterious transition between worlds and words, which strengthens his existential fiber and empowers him quite much. Perhaps from here the fascination for clowns, altogether with the fear, uneasiness, anxiety or repulsion sometimes. The limits of their behaviour are different from our limits of perceiving it, that's where the hilarious comes from. And we don't have to forget how all this conundrum of dualities reflects on the clown. In this painting, the clown is turning his head towards the viewer, while still with his back towards us. Almost shy, scared, his eyes are a fountain of repressed fears..still wanting your presence and attention, but ready to leave, behind the veil of his treacherous condition. On the other side, his coat is full of symbols, which are strikingly different in their variety, created to make noise when touching them with our look , to attract, to provoke the eye, to de-condition the perception of the beholder.
The painting has a certain 3D effect that is made to increase the potency of these noisy toy-symbols.
The name of the painting, following from all these existential dualities, is
The Psychedelic Clown - 24x24 inch (2015).
Visions of a Shaman 2
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 40x30 inch
Story:
Visions of a Shaman 2 is the second painting of a four piece collection I called “Vision of a Shaman”. This collection talks about the evolution of consciousness, having centrally the figure of a shaman, in four hypostases of his spiritual growth.
The painting Visions of a Shaman 2 is about the second hypostasis of this evolution, revealing the shaman in his fundamental opening to the universe. Not only that the universe shows itself through the visual language of the visions, unseen in an ordinary state (Visions of a Shaman1), but it opens itself back to the shaman in a radical way. Its dark doesn’t mean darkness, it symbolizes the boundless richness of its abyss and also the breakthrough of our consciousness beyond the fabric of this world. His belly is also opening towards the universe, in an attempt to clear off the virulence of the worldly impulses , attachments and addictions into a state of ecstasy of the self.
The Shaman in this second painting is represented in a lotus position, in deep meditation, streaming into the universe, while still immersed in the world, seated on a bed of poppy flowers, symbol of silent cosmos breathing beyond the world. The visions become manifest around the Shaman: on the left hand of the beholder, crowds of thoughts getting materialized under the force of self inquiry and on the right hand hearts in broken cages, freeing themselves up from their attachments). The painting is the story of the transcendental take off, the meditation and the visions being mere vehicles of an upright dive into the very essence of the universal truth.
Shadow Dancers
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 20x16 inch
Story:
The painting I call Shadow dancers is talking about the magic of form when the dancers are mere shadows in the heart of their dance. Their passion melts them together and it bounds them to that moment in time, like in an work of art. The organic way I chose to represent the dancers is to express exactly this hypostasis – their living in the now of their passion and creative effort, while graciously dissolving themselves into their unified harmony. The dance is a privileged model of living, priming the harmony and coexistence. The dancers are located in a large structure, a cathedral, which attempts to amplify the scene.
Dawn of Ego
SORiaN - Oil on canvas - 2015
Size: 30x24 inch
Story:
The painting Dawn of Ego represents the continuation of Birth of Self, a different painting I finished in the beginning of 2015, talking about the weaving of our fragmentary and uneven self, while cohabitating with the demonic presences within itself.
Down of Ego talks about the emergence of ego and the design scaffold of our attachment to this world, it is the story of how, metaphorically, its fundamental elements coalesce into something that starts holding solid reality. This is the foundation on which the fabric of this world as reality resides and from which our thoughts materialize the world as we know it.
The painting shows the moment when the human world, under the pressure of the ego, is individualizing and separating from the self (this painting talks about separation and the achievement of form). At the end of this tunnel, the phenomenon of experience will be shaped, which will hold in itself the very thin thread of returning to the self, when the attachment will be finally deconstructed, by understanding its illusory nature and evolving beyond it.
The painting focuses in the center on a barbed wire head-shaped figure, one-eyed, with pieces of flash formed on it. It is the head of a human, made of steel barbed wire, grey and rigid, imposing separation and suggesting the idea that it is incomplete, that it requires steps to be achieved to a higher degree of complexity in order to be finished. The image suggests pain and tension, nerves are flowing in this head-shape, attempting to give some kind of life to this figure. The barbed wire head is surrounded by various kinds of symbols, on a blue-grey background, deep, dramatic, marking the crucial event, the dawn of ego, which is the actual falling into history.
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