Seeking Further Sanctuary

This is the fifth of seven in the Seeking Sanctuary series I completed a few weeks ago. The pieces are currently hanging at The Nest: Center for Women, Children and Families (until I pick them up tomorrow!) and they couldn't have found a more appropriate setting. Each piece is deeply, specifically personal, with so much symbolism that it's amusing when I hear a comment like, "Oh, that's so pretty!" In this piece for example, Cinderella, there is a rusty razor blade, a gun and a stick pin, albeit masked amid pearls and a gorgeous Frozen Charlotte. 

Most of us know the pain of rejection, humiliation, falling short, abuse, neglect and other sorrows and I wanted to express darker moments in these, a sweeping out of the old bones, per se. So, as you can see, the shoe doesn't fit Cinderella after all... no happy ending. 

In (her fourth volume of) The Diary of Anais Nin, she wrote about the creative's need for emotional excess; in other words, my earlier life, every event leading up to this blog post is the collective well of material, a vast storehouse from which I'm able to transfer, translate, transform my experiences in a way that suits me. I suppose it could be considered rationalizing but I think most, like Nin, would agree. 

Don't know why it took so long for me to open the vein and work intuitively, no rational-thought based decisions, and let the imagery emerge. Most satisfying indeed.

"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."

~Anais Nin