Millennial Sunset
© 1996 Ruary Allan
14" x 18"
oil on canvas

The turning of the millennium according to the Gregorian calendar may be an apparently arbitrary event, but it sure comes laden with unprecedented crises and profound changes from the state of our ancient world. These radical changes have arisen in the blink of an eye from a geo-historical perspective. Of course, the turning of the ages according to the rather less arbitrary Mayan and other calendars is happening in close synchrony.

In this painting, human high-culture, represented by the masculine, conscious solar power, is returning home to a vast mythic space beneath the ocean to unite with lunar, Gaian and feminine archetypes. Also entering this space (through the broken window of our western world view) is a bag containing the horrors and achievements of our cultural legacy. The healing of the schism between technological culture and the natural world (the latter contained within a space extending from a floating womb) seems to me a pivotal idea at this time.

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