Wound Of the Dragon

I viewed a 16th century alchemical illustration directly after Pranayama to see how my freshly charged brain worked with the obscure symbolism. After contemplating the image I went into my studio and splattered this collage with red ink. The idea of a dragon's wound...it turns my mind in an unexpected way. It's the wound itself that captures my interest; stigmata of the mystical beast, Achilles heel, the vulnerability of metaphysical tissue. We can pierce the divine body. What does that mean?

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This Image 'Wound Of the Dragon" Elena Ray Copyright 2007. Mixed Medium Collage with traditional Chinese Warrior papercut. After finishing this post it came to me that I never cut paper shapes for my collages. I think this is usually one of the first things the beginning collage artist does, but I've purposefully avoided the practice of using scissors and X-Acto knives for some reason...Excited by these thoughts this morning at 3 AM I got up, took myself some beautiful batik paper, and cut out a dragon's tail.

I pierce the body of Paper-my metaphysical tissue.

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(P.S. After some time I decided that the dragons tail over loaded the visual impact of the image, so like many of my collages, this image will continue to transform-the tail will be removed, the torn paper beneath it will reveal another option. Original finished version shown here. )