The Transitional Image

Bone To Marrow

Yesterday a friend loaned me his copy of Ashes and Snow. I wept like a little child watching it-at first just for the sheer beauty of it, then for the poem, then for regret healed in spiritual realization. Life as temple. I felt myself absorb this message, yes, all the way to my marrow. And as I gazed into the golden eyes of my orange tabby I knew it was true. We live on sacred ground.

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This Image "Chinese Bonsai". Illustration 4. Elena Ray Copyright 2008.

Archetypal Psychology

The alchemist personified
that unfathomable actions
make unlimited creativity
the hallmark of our species.

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Symbols attract. But don't get caught up in the form of what you desire or you might find yourself being bought and sold...

They're everywhere in everything. When you practice this art life glitters with a curious attractiveness. Everything is much more than it appears.

Always my awe for Carl Jung and the illuminations he shared.
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This Image "Fortress". Illustration 16. Elena Ray Copyright 2008.

White Ranunculus

To unfold. To open. To be sweet.
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This Image "White Ranunculus". Illustration 64. Elena Ray Copyright 2008.

Scapegoat

The ways to be creative are infinite.
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This Image "Scapegoat" Illustration 38. Elena Ray Copyright 2008. My internet has been pretty much out for almost two weeks now. We've replaced cable, rerouted it and drilled holes into our house, replaced the modem, and still can't figure out what is really to blame for the constant outage. I can say that the service from India is getting better all the time! I like those Indian girls with name like Sam and Ann.

Contemplate

Writing as a dangerous medium (((.
*Like yoga, an insensitive or undisciplined practice can result in injury or any number of other imbalances.
Yet a restrained and inhibited practice does little for vitality.

All the arts are revelatory practices.

Clarity illuminates imagination.

Emotion is the skin to the mind.

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This Image "untitled" Illustration 31. Elena Ray Copyright 2008.

Transformation

Grace under pressure, a butterfly...

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This Image "untitled". Elena Ray Copyright 2008. Corie Angel flies away.

Illustration 14

Completeing this image I had that odd kinda dejavu like feeling that this image has existed long before it came out through the portal of me. And that it was laughing at me as it flew away-completely unappreciative of my labour! Strange the things that travel the metaphysical web, things of all kinds, seeking their exit into manifestation. Stranger even more, those of us who endlessly prepare body and mind to bear such things. People are strange. Jim Morrison was right.

I miss Jim, the Lizard King. I had two identical posters of Jim in his black leather pants taped up in my teenage bedroom (playing with the double motif concept that Mr Robinson was teaching us in Humanities). The funny thing is that Jim was already long dead, yet sexier than ever. Maybe Jim Morrison really did just run off to become new self. He's proabably a Siddhar somewhere in India, deep in transcendantal meditation, dreaming, dreaming, dream of me Jim (((...

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This image "untitled" Elena Ray Copyright 2008. Illustration 14.

Darkness

There is nature. Always free.
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This Image "untitled" Elena Ray Copyright 2008. Illustration 41. Scan of a palladium print I made about 15 years ago (cropped to square and overlaid with Medieval pattern in Photoshop). Like many photographers, I have an endless curiosity with antiquated photographic processes. I still occasionally indulge myself in them but for me, Photoshop along with the pigment ink printer, is the laboratory of choice. But everything is what is is. The original palladium print of George here is one of the most extraordinary moments of my career. A palladium print is metal on wood, essentially. God, that's seductive.

Prima Materia

I'd like to be a happy mystic.

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This image "Solvtio Perfecta" Elena Ray Copyright 2008. Illustration 58.

Subtle

I've decided that I like everything about my Jesus picture except that I don't like the image itself. It lacks subtlety. It comes off contrived. I've been trying to figure out how to save it because I love the photograph of Tasya, I love the halo, I love the columns, I even love the subject matter. So I decided that it's probably the color that is ruining it, but I can't figure out how to remove the color without turning the image into mush. The colors are holding the image together like some kind of garish glue...

I'll put it aside for awhile. Often enough solutions arrive as if on a slow boat from China...but perhaps I should not rely on the Chinese for solutions at this socioeconomic time...

So I will ponder the concept of subtlety-how an image contains the composition-less, colorlessness of subtlety. What is it, that isn't, that is so important?

Actually, I did purchase a used book at the Cactus Wren yesterday: "The Way Of Chinese Painting" by Mai-mai Sze. What does she say, published in 1956...?

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This image "untitled" unassisnged illustration. Copyright Elena Ray 2008. Just something to assure myself that I'm not a total butcher of the color spectrum.