The following images (with accompanying commentary) of original art were done on student grade canvases with lightweight 5/8ths inch stretcher bars. They were originally painted in order to create digital files that would then become greeting cards. Some of the images have never been displayed before.
If you are interested in owning one of these originals, please contact me at richard@richardwelkerart.com. All of them are being offered for $175.00 plus tax and free shipping. If you want your painting mounted in a black satinhigh quality wood floater frame from Franken Frames in Tennessee, estimate $100.00 additional for the frame and mounting.
To expand the size of an image, please click on the thumbnail image.
CHAOS
From a psychological perspective, chaos occurs whenever there is a disruption to our belief system that deconstructs our identity. Chaos causes us to question who we are, why we are here and what our relationship to the cosmos is. This disintegration can happen through trauma, spiritual emergency, sudden loss, or a violation of the natural order of things. Chaos intensifies when we are forced to endure the unendurable alone, when the illusion of separation isolates us from the support and comfort of others.
Chaos can be personal and collective, the gatekeeper to the threshold where two divergent realities collide. Chaos is a constant challenge to a settled shared reality as well as a state of chronic collapse and breakdown.
Chaos is often the precursor to great creativity and renewal, hence its essential role in the process of evolutionary change.
HEARTFIRE
From the deepest center of our being burns the eternal flame of love. Independent of recognition, accolades, or material success, it is the source of all joy. Heart-fire is the heat of our passion, the brilliance of our purpose, the beacon that guides us again and again to the path of our soul’s trajectory.
Heart-fire is our light in the darkest night, the furnace that warms when the world turns cold. It is the glow that draws us to lovers, family and friends, the radiance of compassion for others. It is the blaze of praise we feel when experiencing the world as alive and conscious. Heart-fire is the courage to break ties that bind, to challenge denial of the right to thrive, to create passages and possibilities where none exists, to heal ourselves of trauma and despair.
It is the salvation we pray for, the divine forgiveness that consumes karma and renews our certainty that we belong to each other and to the universe. Heart-fire is the un-extinguishable spark of God in the core of everything.
GAIA
Gaia is the living conscious spirit of Earth, the primordial ancestral Mother, who guides the evolution of all species and nourishes all regenerative earth processes including climate and biofeedback loops. Gaia is the embodiment of interconnection and wholeness. No matter how chaotic and increasingly ferocious things become, Gaia remains stable.
The four quadrants of the Gaia mandala represent land, water, mega-life and micro-life. Surrounding and interpenetrating all are molecules of air. The inner core of Gaia’s stability, strength and balance is symbolized by the three legs of the triangle. At each corner is red hot fire, the volcanic symbol of the force that drives extinction, death and rebirth.
Not a moment too soon are we finally re-awakening to her holy presence and power, flooded with deep awe, profound respect and worship.
DREAMSPOT
The image “Dreamspot” appeared spontaneously in a dream along with some hints about how to paint it. It was a collaboration between the conscious mind and the superconscious mind, between the receiver and the transmitter, the source of inspiration and intuition.
The painting was achieved by drawing a 2-inch central circle on a black canvas and then adding six more concentric equidistant rings moving outward like ripples. The circles were then divided into sixteen rays, each 22.5º apart. At each intersection of ray and ring I placed a yellow dot or “spot.” This became the starting point for a series of U shaped forms made using a small dowel, fluid acrylic paint and a dot painting technique of “descending or disappearing dots.”
The painting was completed by filling in the widening spaces between each column of U-shaped rays with intermediate partial columns of U-shapes. The last touch was to color in the spaces between the U-shapes with alternating green and violet dots. The remaining unpainted black spaces allows the painting to stand out vividly.
WAKEUP CALL
An enchanted rattlesnake encircles a mandala of light, the image of Wake Up Call. The serpent signifies crisis, which means both danger and opportunity. The green outer ring of the mandala represents DNA and thus life. Surrounding the circle of life are symbols of order as well as chaos suggesting intelligent order behind the chaos.
The background of the painting is an earth color. Waking up with respect for nature and a humble appreciation that all life is sacred and interconnected is the subject of Wake Up Call.
VESSEL
A vessel can be a container, like a bowl or a vase, an ocean or air ship, a canal or duct of the body, a tube through which blood passes. We ourselves can be a vessel, a receptacle of divine inspiration, a channel through which creativity flows.
Vessel is represented here by the mandala. The circular form suggests seed, center point, bindu or dot out of which everything in existence is created. In the journey of our life, we symbolically travel from inner to outward round the circumference of the mandala in all that we experience. Returning to the center is the act of meditation, the experience of inner peace and authenticity. At the deepest most invisible point, it is enlightenment.
Vessel as mandala represents the universe, circular in nature, a symbol of cosmic order and great beauty.
CONDUIT
The image Conduit is both a mandala and a graphic representation of a cross-section of an imaginal psychic fiber-optic cable. It symbolizes etherial structural bandwidths that simultaneously filter and carry many different frequencies of information in a flow or stream.
It is through such psychic conduits of consciousness that the brain’s nerve receptors interface with the non-physical realms of emotion, intuition and spirit enabling us to recognize patterns and thus make sense of the world.
DORJE
Dorje is the thunderbolt that shocks us out of our assumptions about reality, leaving our belief system in a state of collapse. It represents the dawning awareness of a collective spiritual emergency: a rapid, sudden, chaotic psychological transformation. Yet despite our rage, terror and grief over what has been lost, this crisis is a blessing in disguise, for it portends healing, new potentials, and an expanded awareness of the unity of all life.