About the artwork

Swan is a contemporary re-interpretation of the bird goddess as nourishing vessel from the Aegean Sea region during the Bronze Age (3,300 B.C. - 1,200 B.C.). On the Cycladic island of Thera (modern day Santorini), nippled ewers with spouts as heads and beaks were common in the matriarchal Minoan culture.  Though the ancient black-and-white functional pitchers were often slender or stout and roughly hewn (in the gallery here, see original works as excavated from "Minoan Pompeii" Thera town of Akrotiri destroyed by a volcanic eruption circa 1,600 B.C.), my sleek glazed ceramic sculpture enacts the elegant lines of a swan: graceful, elongated neck, head and beak atop a diamond-shaped body with etchings of feathers.  The mesmerizing enlarged stylized eyes evoke the mysterious all-knowing sensibility of feminine intuition. Swan is part of my Eternal Goddess series of timeless icons expressed in enduring artistic symbols.  Prehistoric fetish figures.  Warriors.  Queens. Mothers.  Modern feminists. They celebrate feminine power: fertility, nourishment, love, renewal, vulnerability, strength, beauty, sensuality, regality, dignity, intelligence, wisdom, and communion with nature and each other.  Through a host of media and in styles ranging from representational to abstract to Pop Art, the works come alive via designs born in primeval times but embraced today: chevrons, swirls, zig zags, breast, nets, snakes, eggs, moons, arrowheads, vulvas, spirals, etc.  The "goddess hieroglyphics," if you will, as coined by archeologist and prehistorian Marija Gimbutas. Simple.  Classic.  Ancient. But also Modern. As such, Swan and the Goddess Eternal series are part of umbrella motif of my works featured here, Ancient is Modern, Modern is Ancient, which translates abstract art techniques of color, geometry, texture, shape, line, form, and pattern of bygone eras into contemporary aesthetic and sensibility. (My Cave Art and Southwestern Landscape series fall under this umbrella theme as well.)  Swan's striking geometric shapes of half-moon eyes, cone-shaped breasts, and diamond-shaped body honor the ancient artistic goddess language.