PAINTINGS: “MASKS OF GOD … “ SERIES

“mother kali”

“… Mother Kali is at first glance a strange and bizarre image to the eyes and minds of westerners.  Kali is the personification of that aspect of the Divine Mother that compassionately destroys the ego.  This is not a prevalent concept in western culture.  Here, almost everything in our culture adores the ego. …  Dependence on God alone and not our own clever cunning is all but lost.

In the academic sense Mother Kali is the primordial energy which animates space and perceived by us as the linear sequence of events which we call time.  Her skin is midnight blue, almost black, which represents the womb of existence. …. This is the quantum world of unformed potentials and probabilities from which all phenomena continually arise and into which they continually disappear.

She is standing, dancing on the chest of Lord Shiva who, as pure primal awareness, lays in a passive reclining position, peacefully reposed with his eyes half open in a state of bliss.

Here Mother Kali is in her Terrible Form with her left foot forward.  Her Necklace consists of fifty skulls that represent the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, the origin of sound.  Two right arms grant fearlessness and offer boons.  She protects Her children from danger and fulfills their desires.  Her two left arms hold a sword and hold a severed head.  She can cut human bondage with the sword of knowledge and impart wisdom to the head which is the receptacle of supreme wisdom.  Kali’s waist is encircled with a girdle of severed human arms that represent action.  All human actions and their results go to the Divine Mother.  At the end of a cycle all souls merge with Kali.  During creation they again evolve with their respective karmas.  Shiva is under Her feet.  Shiva and Kali (Shakti) are always together.  He is the changeless aspect of the Supreme and She is the apparently changing aspect of the same.  Shiva is pure cosmic consciousness and Kali is cosmic energy.  No creation is possible without their union.”

In my “Mother Kali”, children are opening her “Mask of God” to peer into the dark space that is able to contain the negative energies that she consumes.

"mother kali"

26"H x 20" W

Acrylic paints, gold leaf, inks, pastels, craypax on Bristol Board

Photo by SkyLark Images