Gaia
Sometimes the creative process for a painting takes a long time. Last year I had the idea in my head to paint a woodland goddess of some sort. So I painted a greenish background, painted the face of a beautiful redhead in the centre and sketched out various woodland animals around her. Then I had to leave it as I was busy doing commissions leading up to Christmas. Also I wasn't entirely happy with it. So my painting languished unfinished leaning against the wall in the corner of my dining room. She stayed there for months. Then my husband had radio 4 on in the car while we were driving somewhere and they were talking about Gaia and how she wasn't all lovely and summery, there was a dark side to her too - winter, storms, volcanoes etc. This got me thinking about painting Gaia showing both sides of her. Originally, in my head, the dark side looked a bit like Maleficent! I had to get that image out of my head. Then I remembered my woodland goddess that I'd started painting. Perfect. So I got her out again and immediately I could see how she would evolve into Gaia. I started painting her dark side first. I wanted to get away from the Maleficent image. So I started adding purple and blue shadows on her face and darker colours in her hair. The blues in her hair suggested a raven which then went on to suggest other "dark" animals on that side of the painting.Then I added the moon, the sun and the Earth. I now knew exactly where my painting was going. On the dark side we have the moon, a storm, a raven, fox, badger, rat, spider moth, bat and barn owl flying through a winter landscape. Ont the good side (or light side - whichever way you want to look at it - good and dark keeps making me think of Star Wars!) we have the sun, a woodpecker, roe deer, hare, buzzard, butterfly, bee, ladybird and a goldfinch and a summer scene. Both sides are pretty equally balanced with Gaia and Earth in the middle. Both sides co-exist equally and balance each other . It took a long time getting there which involved lots of just standing staring at the painting imagining the next step but I finally finished her. She is for sale over in my Etsy shop
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/525405550/gaia-goddess-mother-earth-original? ref=shop_home_active_2
(with prints on the way) but for the moment she has pride of place on our dining room wall. I do hope you like her.
