Kel Rae on The Goddess
After many years of travel, I was still empty and then it began in 1996 while living in California – pregnant with an overwhelming urge to paint. I painted the entire house, including the twenty-foot ceilings, and then repainted it. Finally, my neighbor, (art major) came over with some paints and a canvas and this was the beginning of knowing the Goddess….
At that time I painted many things, but all left me feeling awkward and wrong. It wasn’t until I painted a very large female body that I became settled/ satiated. When I tried to paint other things, the feeling of wrongness surfaced until I returned to painting the female figure. So, I continued on this path.
All my goddesses were headless. I would paint a perfectly shaped head and feel this horrible feeling would surface. As soon as the head was off, I felt right again. It wasn’t until years later, after many headless goddesses that I realized her head was cut off because she had no ego.
She was archaic, primordial and the first mother ever.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“Her Essence represents the mysterious life-providing force within all things. Her soft essence is harmony-bound moving us towards authenticity in all aspects of our life."
The Spirit of the Great Mother, known by many names, metaphorically represents the mysterious and loving life-providing source from which we put forth from, which exists within all things. I herald the Sprit of this Great Mother as the bringer of peace by manifesting Her Love through us to create balance and I feel my paintings are a meta-language for beingness. Some of my paintings have a black background – in early times black represented the color of fertility – the womb where life emerged from nourishing soils. Red ocher was the vibrant color of life indicating earthly inhabitance and white depicted the end of physical life and a new beginning.
At times I incorporate the lotus to represent the great mystery of Her being which lies behind existence. The roots of the lotus connect like umbilical cords to Her great womb where impulse births the bloom. One cannot point directly to the Great Mother, She is invisible, detected only in the delicate arc of a stem or within the fragrance of a bloom.
Almost all of my Goddesses do not have heads as the Great Mother is the feeler – the ‘knower’ – and not the thinker (represented by the head). She is the body’s innate intelligent system that takes over when the mind shuts down. She is the over-riding impulse that directs when the mind cannot comprehend its situation. She is the non-thinker, The Knower providing direction when all appears lost.
My paintings enable the observer to allow the soft and gentle truth of their own being to rise to the surface. Each painting is a reminder of the gentle mystery behind life, a mystery born through and nurtured by a grand and loving essence that moves through all life like the spirit of a Great Mother.
