Passage to India

After my daughter was born my husband and I sort of went crazy, sold our house and moved clear across the country. It took us less than two years to realize we made a mistake so we moved back to California and bought our old house back from the people we'd sold it to. No kidding.

During the time we did not live in California I did four series of paintings, one of which was called Passage to India. The series originally had 14 paintings and all were at least 30"x40" in size. I sold many of the pieces to a gallery and some to collectors. I do however have two of the series still in my possession that I'd sort of forgotten about. Not because I don 't love them, they both were hanging in my house but because I'd just gotten use to seeing them.

A few days ago a couple who purchased one of the paintings from this series contacted me to see if I had any pieces left and after running around the house I realized I had two. The one here is called "Eve Never Sinned" and was the second in the series. I painted this when my daughter was about six months old. There is a lot of symbolism in this piece for me personally.

The form of the woman's body is shown as the tail on Lotus with Shri in the center. I realized after my daughter was born that women are really the center of being and thus if you are Christian then my commentary would be that "Eve Never Sinned". Of course as part of a series about India this brings in the Shri and a walled city at the end of the Silk Road. I could spend a lot of time talking about this concept and I'm sure I haven't given the concept justice in this post. Hopefully you get the idea.

The Shri shown in the center of the lotus and then stamped randomly on the canvas is from a wooden stamp a friend brought back from India for me. Actually, the funny thing is he didn't bring it back but had is mom hand carry a shopping bag full of wooden blocks from India to California for me. Many blessings to his mother!

So, in short that is the story of Eve Never Sinned. One of my favorite paintings.