So here's a 1995 snapshot of me in an outfit I made for a museum benefit that won the Best Handmade Costume Award. The dress was floor length and tie-dyed velvet; and the wings, which moved, were strapped on with a red satin ribbon. Each paper feather was cut and glued down, a process which took two days; and the inside, which you can't see of course, was copper foil covered with lacy rice paper. At the time I still painted abstracts, but clearly had angels on my mind.

Sometimes the angel is a ghost. As a Buddhist, I think of them as being basically the same thing; spirits, for lack of a better word, who observe and perhaps protect us. Or, depending on their mood, their unfinished business, annoy or upset us. Named for a departed friend, Sam I Am is definitely a ghost. The cloud-like color, the insubstantial, full of holes body; but then he's on a field of green, which indicates he's hopeful.

And two more, early masks, just for fun. Sort of a pair, siblings in fuschia, with their hair on fire. It's a good thing they have each other, since they don't really go with the rest of the series. Done in colored pencil, they led to my cutting the masks out because the pigment got smeared on the background, a happy accident and trade secret. 

I like doing this, posting these older pieces to the blog; seeing them again gives me great inspiration for the new paintings I'm creating, which I'll show you someday, I promise.

Two very early masks, done the same day, long before my internship at the Smithsonian. I was thinking about Africa and mud. Too small to wear, they were painted with gouache on black paper and cut out, eye sockets and mouth holes too, then mounted on black board. They both sold before I could frame them, to different people, out of the portfolio on the way to have slides made. There was a third one done during the same sitting, actually the first, that I keep for sentimental reasons that was not very successful. But good enough to get me started on these.

I like working on squares; once I started using them, it was impossible to go back to rectangles. Except for the masks, which need an oblong, the shape is a good gauge to where the piece falls in the series. This is Chanteuse, I think she's singing, and there's metallic paint in her golden color, another sign of when she was created. 2004,  part of my Iraq War protest collection; a Garuda girl, with her wings ablazing.

This is Garuda, does he look familiar? Peruse a few of my previous posts and he should. Although I wear a little gold Ganesh pendant around my neck, Garuda is my favorite of the Hindu-Buddhist gods. They are buddies, Garuda and Ganesh, some folk lore says they're kin. They are both removers of obstacles; Ganesh, the elephant-faced friendly one, does it with blessing and bliss, while Garuda with his bird beak and anger, blows in like a fiery tornado and wreaks havoc on his enemies. My hero. He also hates snakes and is usually seen with a dead one in his mouth.

And for some reason I don't understand, he always seems to have breasts. I have made several versions, like the one here which is titled Gaia, yes, a female name, painted for the first day of Spring and not really a Garuda girl at all. Well, maybe she is, don't tornados come with the turbulent end of Winter?

Archetype is a Jungian term championed by Joseph Campbell that refers to images that speak to all cultures in the same language. As I prepared to write my master's thesis on angels as archetypal images, before I dropped out during the meltdown over my mother's suicide, the most intriguing data I came across was the theory that angels were actually aliens. The fiery chariots, their wings and halos, were explained, along with giant earth paintings in South America and the wilds of Great Britain, by this concept. Smacks of Fox Mulder. I'll bet he knew who Carl Jung was.