“Boats”

For me, my “Boat” series symbolizes rebirth, journey, and transport to transcendence.

The boat as a vessel is a metaphor for our bodies, the containers of our souls.   Like all containers, vessels symbolize the feminine.  But these boats have a mandorla shape with distinct differences between the outer and inner forms. This symbolizes the intersection of the two spheres of heaven and earth, or spirit and matter. The inner chamber represents for me the inner soul of myself,  my spiritual core and my womb.  This is the container of rebirth, a place from which all new life emerges. If we listen to the Goddess Persephone who teaches us to return to our sacred center to find the answers to the big questions of our life, our journey will take us across oceans of experience and transform us to wholeness.

Ultimately, I see in these “boats” the duality of the feminine and the masculine and an invitation to integrate all pairs of opposites:  external and internal, rough and smooth, public personality and private reality,  spiritual and material. Our outside being can be rough and bumpy, burdened with the barnacles of life, but beneath the blemishes is a vast unknown realm of darkness, a place of terror for some, but also a place of great beauty and perfection:  this is the preciousness of the real soul. The two worlds are very different, yet the interior, with its smooth undulating surface, reiterates the same folds and forms of the outside, reminding me that my task on this journey is to meld the inner and outer into a harmonious balance that will transcend the opposites and transport me safely through the rough and smooth journey of life.