We have been focused on a chakra series in Kundalini yoga, and the role emotions play in our world. While working on our root Muladhara (मूलधारा) chakra, we meditated a great deal on the role of fear. How it protects, inhibits, pushes, powers, paralyzes. And that lead me here...
Aashanka II
आशंका
Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Canvas
12”X12”
Childhood phobias persist, despite the rational mind. A bee is such an essential part of our ecosystem, a propagator of life, and yet, can we help but flinch when one buzzes too close?
Aashanka I
आशंका
Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Canvas
12”X12”
What makes a moth scary, but a butterfly beautiful? Is it because a moth is a creature of the night?
Aashanka III
आशंका
Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Canvas
12”X12”
Is night what makes bats terrifying? Is it the quality of the swarm? Something unsettling about a mammal with wings? Or is this Bram Stoker’s fault? There was something strangely satisfying and creepy about painting this bat, the veins instead of cells, the transition to mammal.
Aashanka IV
आशंका
Acrylic and Rose Gold Leaf on Canvas
12”X12”
I thought about the kinds of adult fears that I push down, deep down, beyond the daily anxieties of life. Climate change terrifies me. It makes me feel far more helpless and hopeless than I will admit.
But isn’t fear a gift? I think about the times in my life when fear has forced me to react, respond, when fear has saved me, and my loved ones. How lucky I am to experience the sort of love, friendship, and planet I fear losing.
I played with iridescent paint and black canvas for this series. Because that is the thing about fear, no? One person’s phobia may be a thing of beauty to another. Examining a fear might make you look at it as a gift. The darkness may make you appreciate the color. The tilt, the right light, it may negate the fear.