The Dance of the Nebulae - Society's Expectations and Inner Reality.

The Dance of the Nebulae - Different classical representations of women & what she really should be.

Recently I have covered a lot about the divine feminine, it is something that has always fascinated me and is my attempt to balance things up from my own perspective. However I personally feel that all sexes or whatever we choice to be is divine & deserves respect. I have covered this subject extensively  in my blog http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/05/the-changing-face-of-sacred-feminine.html

I have had a fascination for the wild woman aspect of the feminine since I was a little girl, it was probably another reason why I never fitted into the social norms of others because I did not hold with the fact that boys were more important or better than girls and nor did I feel they had any more rights than I did.  At 5 years old it is hard to put these feelings into words but my questions & observations were not appreciated by my teachers or other authorities that held social norms close to their mindset and hearts.

As I grew & time went by I came to the realisation that many woman in other families apart from my own seemed rather repressed in themselves.  I have always been who I am so I am far from perfect.  I make mistakes, I sometimes misunderstand a situation, I misread people or I miss the message altogether.  I try not to hurt other people but know that I have, it is usually unintentional or when I am defending myself but at times my temper has got the better of me & I have told someone exactly how I feel and have regretted it afterwards.  This is all part of growing & it occurs throughout a lifetime.  

However, as I grew I saw that many woman and girls were expected to be 'Nice Girls'.  This is a phrase that sets my teeth on edge even now, what the hell is a 'Nice Girl'?  Is a 'Nice Girl' someone who has to do what others want?  Is it what she dresses in?  Is it her behaviour & manners? 'Nice girls don't do that'; I was often told, usually with the nasty inflection on the tone of my teacher's voice that I wasn't one of those 'Nice Girls' and would never be one either.  As a youngster, I tried so hard to be that sort of girl, one that who was acceptable like the other 'Nice Girls' at school but I never did get to that stage & whatever I did was never enough.  

As a teenager I rebelled again this expectation, how dare THEY tell ME who I was supposed to be? Who did THEY think THEY were! So I would do everything in my power out of sheer devilment to be a 'Bad Girl'.  Sometimes I had a lot of fun, sometimes I ended up in deep shit, usually both at the same time but whatever the outcome of these adventures, I learnt an awful lot and it helped me balance out when true adulthood did arrive.  Yet what is adulthood?  I have always believed that we are all at a funny age, whatever age we are and sometimes when we are under severe stress, adulthood takes a long hike and we can all revert to being what we were & how we felt as young children and when that happens it often isn't pretty. 
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/02/emotions-accepting-rough-with-smooth.html

Repression of the inner wild woman can often lead to these inner conflicts that give rise to any number of confusing messages from any individual in adulthood.  Many of us have been conditioned to be 'Nice Girls' throughout our lives & this is sometimes hard to overcome, especially when boys do things like lift up your skirt and you are told as a child by teachers or their parents that they are 'just being boys' & this is what 'boys sometimes do so stop making such a fuss over nothing'.  What the hell is all that about? This leads to the belief that you are not a 'Nice Girl' & somehow it is your fault that a boy has lifted up your skirt and that boys can do the hell what they like with you whereas you have to be 'Nice' and just take this behaviour on the chin!  This is just one example of an inner conflict that arises & how it leads to bigger conflict later on in life. 

If the wild woman is repressed and has been for some time, taking bad behaviour from badly bought up 'boys' can occur throughout their lifetime. All through my life I have watched ladies from every social stratum, their inner battle to me are plastered all over their faces, although they are never aware of this.  How they struggle with their lot in life, how they squirm sorting out the cleaning at the local church when in reality going to church was their husband's need not theirs & how they died inside each time their husbands made a sexist joke & thought he was ever so witty as she would grind her teeth and 'smile'.  Forced laughter is  habitual in these circumstances but if looks could kill these men would have been 6 feet under in a flash.  Every town, city & village has situations like these, with a woman caught in up the assumptions of others, quietly dying under a social expectation that was never hers to fulfil.  Some women are content with their lot, cleaning their church & their husband's tasteless jokes so they fit their own social expectation & are happy in that role but many are not & nor should they be & most women go through these scenarios at some stage of their lives.  Some accept it, some kick up a stink until it changes and others leave.

We all pick up the conditioning that has been dished out to us and as this leads to inner conflict it is bound to flood out & over the boundaries of the human mind.  Both men and woman act as conditioning has taught them and it is a brave person that faces their own conditioning and questions what they have been taught.  As adults we choice who we become but in some cases we must break our childhood conditioning to do it and this is easier said then done.   But how does The Dance of the Nebulae relate to all of this?  I have, of course, related this to a woman's point of view.

The Dance of the Nebulae

The Dance of the Nebulae depicts the daily struggle that women have with outer and inner, as well as social  expectations.  I will start to the left of this painting, women have many mountains to climb because there is always this social expectation that they will be 'Nice Girls'. So therefore I have painted mountains in the background, with one mountain that is prominent amongst the rest.  All of these mountains represent the slippery slopes that women have to climb to be what society expects her to be but the prominent mountain is the one that is being climbed at this moment in time by the angel.  

 The angel is perfect in many ways to behold, she is what society thinks a woman should be like but you will see that her arms are wings and she has no hands at all.  This depicts how a woman sometimes feels, her hands are tied when it comes to being what she wants to be because society wants her to be a 'Nice Girl' & focus on everything else expect herself. In addition, a woman feels that she HAS to be what society feels she should be, instead of what she knows she really is.  Her nakedness in this case exposes how vulnerable this makes her feel.  She is not accepted for who she is and sometimes the ones she loves the most do most damage, despite the fact that she has given those she loves her all & shown them everything she can.  Her hair is depicted by the energy that leaves her but this is conflicted energy, torn between trying to please and wanting to be.  Women feel frazzled when they are caught in between these two horns of imperative & the energy that leaves a woman in these times can be felt by all, almost static electricity as she battles within, trying to retain equilibrium and her true self.  Her eyes are dark pits absorbing everything as she tries to find herself but these have a twinkle for this is not in vain.  The two energy swirls by her feet are her attempts to reach out to what is hers, what her true being really wants out of life.  Because she is struggling with her inner conflicts these whorls do not reach out in straight lines.  The inner search to find yourself for anybody rarely goes in a straight line, questions tangle and loop around themselves and often there is a lot of backtracking, depicting that on the surface she is going nowhere fast but inside he is making great progress for the lines of the most important of these energy swirls show that there is more activity within rather than on their surface. 

In the middle of this painting there are two energy forms that dance and sway, these depict the masculine and feminine & this is part of what the angel is contemplating.   Inside their swirls there exist different places which although connected to who they are, depicts the ability to give rise to new life that has a form different to their own.  The crescent moon depicts mystery for sexual attraction & love is often is a mysterious and at times baffling process.  In the middle of these dancing forms is Glastonbury Tor, the sun is rising and shows a figure at the top of the Tor, shadows are cast for they always are from whatever we do.  The deeper areas of sky show that the morning sky is part of the Lady of Avalon, the Goddess & mist rises from her to the moon.  This part of the painting demonstrates how everything is connected  as above so below but also reminds the viewer that the sexual act should be considered sacred.

The far right of the painting  shows a hill.  On the top is planet earth, the white lines surrounding it depicts the ozone layer but at the top there is a hole & the energies from space are seeping through.  We also see that on the edges of the ozone layer, the space energies interact, giving the layer many hues.  The layer also covers the hills, showing that we are protected from the energy that resides in space & as it is the layer itself that pushes out it depicts that at present this layer is still strong but the hole in the top is a warning that this will not last forever.  
The hill is almost an abstract version of the Tor & inside, under the different layers in a sacred space a Goddess resides.  She is the true woman that resides inside of the questing angel. She is of sacred sexuality, true passion that comes from a deep inner calling and her light is so great that not everyone can look upon it.  
The inner Goddess of all of us women has no face & needs no face as her energy is vast and eternal.  Therefore, her 'human' form is almost deformed & it is only the people with social norms that have given her breasts, to underline that she is a sexual being not a sacred one and in some religions she is viewed as not to be trusted & the downfall of mankind.  However, she is of her own sex, rather than sex just for the sake of it & has no need of a body, she just is & always has been & her beauty is raw and elemental.  She has fire on her hands and her face is one of flames and light, although if you look you can see the outline of her eyes within the white heat.  She dances in her flame & is glorified by her own energy & stands in ecstasy in deep red flame that is golden on the edges.  This represents the primal flame,  the original source for us all and it is both light and dark but it is sacred.  Sex & sexuality should always be sacred & this is often forgotten & so it stays deeply repressed, especially under the false lies of what a patriarchal society says it is.  
There is an egg which is blue & white in between these flames of primal passion that burn deep red.  This egg depicts 2 things, reproduction and subsequent birth and also transformation & rebirth.  Once a woman faces her own inner light, transformation of some kind has to occur & life can no longer be lived in the same way that it has been in the past.  Sometimes this process is fast but more often these changes ponderously occur over a longer stretch of time, accompanied by deep yearning but once self-realisation hits in, it is only a matter of time before things start moving in a completely different direction.  From the egg white light beams out for all birth is sacred, inner, outer, physical, spiritual and psychological.  The light goes up from the source of the egg, through the Goddess, passes by earth & into the dancing Nebulae that will be there long after the human race as gone.

It is this scene that gives the Angel a twinkle in her eye, she has glimpsed her true inner self & realises that she does not have to be a 'Nice Girl' she just has to be herself.  So she raises her wings in preparation to fly to this part of her as she has not considered that it is already there, inside of her.  The twinkle is self-acceptance & the knowledge that she can be herself & not have to live up to social expectations.  The whole painting is connected by light, lines and swirls and the different skies that are depicted show that under every sky, all is connected, everything.  As above, so below.

 Additional blogs that relate to this subject:
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/05/the-changing-face-of-sacred-feminine.html
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/02/emotions-accepting-rough-with-smooth.html
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2015/04/stages-of-changing-woman-hood.html
http://tracdaviesartist.blogspot.fr/2014/12/the-inner-wild-woman.html

 

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