Beeing and Fleaing
© 1999 Ruary Allan
24" x 36"
oil on canvas

An intentionally overcomplex nest of images addressing my favorite personal and mythological themes. Hermes at full tilt meets with the limitations of his own consciousness symbolically located at the cornea of his own surrounding eyeball. Outer space and the ocean stand for the inner world, ambiguous umbilical connectivity to that source being a notable theme in this and other pieces. Saturn, the vengeful father is bound in his cave, castrated as the Greek myth depicts, here his testicles sprout tulips opposite a la Dalí. Other archetypal figures impose their presence on our minds; the centaur locked on his image of sexualized femininity, the voluptuous labially engulfing fire maiden.

Those that cannot BE are harassed by the Gaian bees. A flea transforms to a hummingbird to sip a poisonous datura flower. At this moment of possible collapse, a trapeze girl brings firey love to the mantis surmounting the Cadeaus and Hermes transforms to a Tibetan protector deity suggesting both personal and western cultural renewal. Saturns return (occuring for me just before this piece was done) brings purification to that archetype, self realisation and the establishment of a just authority. My presence as artist in the labyrithine psychological symbolism is made overt through the walrus like entity bearing the brush.

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