REINE ASTRA MEDUSA
INTRO: It’s been awhile. Yet it feels like it hasn’t. Progress is happening. I think I’m impatient. When I re-read my writing I see the same ideas over and over again and there isn’t much growth. Then I look inside myself and there has been incredible growth. I see that time is irrelevant. Joy and happiness is King. So how are you doing Reine? I feel strength building within -for sure- I do feel calmer. I have less questions (I still ask quite a few) I’m improving.
I was chasing before. Ideas, dreams, illusions and I recognize that and also realize how silly that feels. I hear myself quietly say “I am happy” every once and a while it changes to “I’m so excited” Right now I’m happy… and impatient. LOL
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I was in high school art class when I decided that I needed to give myself a second middle name. The conviction was so strong that I asked my parents if I could legally change my name and they disagreed strongly. Instead of accepting the answer I decided “it is changed” and when anyone asked my name I responded Reine Astra Medusa Mihtla. And so it was.
Jump forward to Art School. It was the first time in my life that I knew what it felt like to be ‘in the zone’. Art creation was flying out of me at a rapid pace and more importantly I could feel an energy around me that was listening to my desires and delivering them in record time. Anything I thought about, came about.
Other moments were not so graceful. This photo for example was taken pre-photoshop on medium format film. My intention was to understand more about my fascination with the name Medusa. I purchased a bunch of rubber snakes and a bald cap and sat in the photo studio dressing room hot gluing the snakes to the bald cap, while wearing it. Have you ever gotten hot glue on your fingers? The brown snake crossing my forehead and down one temple was in a strategic spot to cover the line of the cap. I had to glue it many times before it actually stuck. My eyes, the sadness in them is because of the excruciating pain of the blisters forming.
What did I learn? Don’t hot glue things to your head, better technology is coming, Medusa was in a lot of pain which probably had something to do with her piercing eyes and wanting to kill people (allegedly).
[Medusa was the serpent-goddess of the Libyan Amazons, representing ‘female wisdom’. Medusa with her snake-hair reminds us of fertility goddesses, invoking the kundalini-energy that rises from the earth, weaves all energy-centres together, allows us to climb the internal ladder of divine knowledge and opens us up to our universal being. The word Medusa comes from the word Metis which means knowledge or divine knowledge.]
PAINTING INFO: Dimension: 36X48 inches. Process: Original photograph altered into a multimedia image on canvas and mounted on hardwood frame. Materials: Acrylic paint, glaze and varathane. In the private collection of Jean Pierre Cartier.
