BOUND TO BE FREE

by Skye Avalon

In my painting Metamorphosis the goddess figure represents her transformational power as both giver and taker of life who suggests all things must change. In this painting, goddess is change and change is eternal. The goddess is looking in the distance as if in a trance. Her hand is gently resting on and pointing to her heart—the metaphorical center of life force energy, and a symbol of both love and the goddess. The butterflies are symbolic of the many transitions—psychological births and deaths—we all make from the time we are born to the time we die. The goddess represents our greatest fear of dying, and at the same time, she embodies our only hope for living. The body, including the brain, is all we have when we are born. When health fails, the physical body dies. In the process of making Metamorphosis, the creative acts of performing and painting returned me to healing answers including: “Am I a body? A mind? A thought?”

As I recovered from serious life events, I became an author, artist, in addition to a psychic medium. As a medium, someone who mediates communication between the living and spirit, I was able to help others heal from emotional, mental, or spiritual trauma.[1] My mediumship prompted me to engage with the idea of being a woman in deeper, more meaningful ways. In the process, I explored personal metaphors for how I feel about my own power and sensuality. I began studying female deities throughout history. The challenge I gave myself was to paint women as empowered everyday goddesses. As I was looking for positive feminine role models outside my family and culture, I could not find religious iconography with positive representations of both dark and light qualities of the goddess in one all-powerful icon. Other than my own visions and ideas about who the goddess is, the confusion I felt from not having a human female role model or a powerful female deity, like the one God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, put me in a perpetual state of searching.

I could not help but wonder where the positive depictions of the nature goddess were. I saw her as a beautiful, sensual seductress and a sacred source of all-encompassing power. Most sacred female figures depicted in artworks in western religions like Islam and Christianity demonize or deny the existence of the dark aspects of goddess or glorify the light aspects of goddess in the iconic form of mother or saint. In these artworks, some of her light aspects include pure innocence or the archetypal beloved mother. Her dark aspects that are treated negatively include sex and sensuality, life and death, the destructive power of nature, and human emotion. In eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, there are many goddesses, which can represent shadow aspects of a divinity’s personality. For instance, the goddess Kali is well known for her relentless destructive powers.[2] I found eastern goddesses to be unconvincing as a visionary whole because I was yearning for a more unified vision of light and dark in one goddess in sacred iconic imagery.

In mystical teachings such as Tantric Buddhism, the human body and all forms are in service of the spiritual quest.[3] I could see beauty in form everywhere in my nature walks and then I started to realize nature has an all-encompassing sacred geometry. Sacred geometry involves belief that geometry and mathematical ratios, harmonics and proportion are found in art, music, light, cosmology. This value system is seen as widespread even in prehistory, a cultural universal of the human condition.[4] There, I cultivated a sense of awe and wonder for all of life. I soon came to believe the human body, life on earth, and sex are sacred.

I painted an almost nude, emotionally raw and sensual female figure in Meditations on Francisco de Zurbaran because I wanted to paint a positive vision of the sacred power of the goddess, not unlike Francisco de Zurbaran’s martyred Christs and Saints. Meditations on Francisco de Zurbaran is a six-panel figurative oil painting inspired by the emotional drama and sacred reverence in Zurbaran’s paintings that rely on detailed anatomical development of the human figure through the use of chiaroscuro and tenebrism.[5] In Meditations on Francisco de Zurbaran, I merge both the light and dark aspects of the feminine principles in one transcendent goddess figure.[6] The goddess’s arms and body are bound with ropes. Her arms are stretched upwards. The torso of the body can be seen from three different angles suggesting there is more than one viewpoint—as if the viewer were walking around the painting. The composition is composed of six 9 x 12-inch wood panels stacked in order to suggest the vertical column of a cross and the human figure. Her feet are free of any binding and she wears a pair of black stilettos. Her toenails are painted red and match the red color of the ropes. The color red throughout the painting represents blood as life force energy and the transcendent aspects of altered states of consciousness. For me, the stiletto shoes and painted toenails represent female sensuality and power. The face is turned upwards towards the sky, and it is impossible to know if her expression is calm or pained. Because I believe the figure is sacred, I have the ropes tied beautifully in thoughtful Shibari knots rather than haphazardly binding her body. The background is dark red and black, suggesting an ominous mood. Her body is fit and strong enough to manage the gravitational force of weighted suspension and the intense pressure of ropes tightly pressing into her flesh. The outer strength projected by this physically fit body is a metaphor for an inner mental and emotional strength to handle the physical pain of being tied. If the body is not strong and fit, serious injury can occur.

In Meditations on Francisco de Zurbaran, the second panel from the top suggests the horizontal bar of the cross where her outstretched arms would have extended past the painted panel. Of course, the panels can be arranged any way the viewer can imagine. Changing the arrangement of the panels from left to right or up and down changes the narrative. To personally relate the emotional and physical experience I feel during my Shibari performance for this artwork, I tried to convey the wonder, awe, pain and surrender I felt through the use of anatomical detail. I wanted to express inner knowing—an intuitive process of feeling through the body—as well as the creative process of self-healing. This is why I chose the Spanish Baroque preference of painting the human body and facial expressions with convincing emotional reverence, rather than with contemplative idealism. I intentionally created the dramatic lighting in the studio during my performance to increase the luminosity of the figure. In setting up the photoshoot, I imagined how I could authentically capture the intensity of what I was feeling during my performance. For instance, I tried to convey the amount of mental and physical endurance needed to relax my mind and body while being suspended from anchor points in bindings that most people would find unimaginably painful. For me, the bindings are briefly painful, then I go into an altered state of consciousness and a feeling of bliss. I translated that experience into Meditations on Francisco de Zurbaran by observing my reference photos. They captured a few transcendent moments when my facial expression conveyed an altered state.

Since the creation of the Affirmations for the Everyday Goddess deck, I have been trying to paint more directly about sacred female sensuality in relation to my own identity as a lover. I am trying to convey the idea of love and union in my paintings without it being another clichéd image of people kissing, hugging, or having sex. I have experienced how being in sexual union with another momentarily merges the male and female aspects of myself in a holistic union of my own inner god and goddess in much the same way as Tantric practice in Tibetan Buddhism.[7] I also realized that healing myself means integrating the instinctive and protective aspects of my masculine identity as well.[8]

For the goddess deck, I had to censor the nudes in my goddess images by adding some clothing in order to sell the product in commercial venues. Creating fine art oil paintings gave me an alternative venue to sell uncensored goddess imagery. I even went back to school to learn how to use oil paint and draw with natural mediums. As my art skills evolved, I began researching new ways to deepen intimacy and love in my personal relationships that are still considered taboo. In the process of diving deeper into the psychology of human relationships and sexual behavior, I discovered few men or women were articulating a positive feminine perspective of bondage in the way I was experiencing it. Most of the forums, social media, and websites promoting BDSM practices were viewed and discussed from the male perspective, probably due to women’s safety concerns and their reluctance to be thought of as a slut or a whore.[9] In that void, my own rope experiences and my bound goddess images helped me to explore cultural taboos about sex and my own erotic persona. My images are designed to project a more diverse, inclusive and sex-positive female role model.

In my painting Wheel of Life, the goddess figure represents the transformational power of the feminine as both giver and taker of life. She is also the archetypal symbol of love. The power of love is one of the most central themes in western and eastern spiritual philosophies. In rope bondage, I discovered a new and meaningful way to connect with my intimate partner through scene play that intensifies emotions and feelings of pain and pleasure. For this painting, I placed the nude goddess on a Catherine Wheel. A Catherine Wheel was used to torture people during medieval times in Europe. The red ropes binding her body to the wheel represent the earthly limitations of having a human body. It has to be taken care of—fed and given water. The horns of the bull represent the power of the earthly masculine aspects of sexual fertility and virility. The bound goddess on the wheel looks relaxed and unafraid even though the bull’s horns are bloody. Placing her upside down enhances the idea of her being in an altered state. The purpose is to suggest that through my bound, earthly body and the use of pain, I can experience transcendence, union and bliss while I am alive.[10] I do not need to be dead to transcend the earthly limitations of my mind and body. Ariel Glucklich says :

Sacred Pain offers no elixir, of course, only a psychology and neurology carefully applied to the monk and the nun, the novice and initiate, pilgrim and mourner, and those practitioners who voluntarily hurt themselves or others as a matter of religious practice and in service to spiritual goals. They all share one basic fact: No matter what theology or cosmology informs their imaginations, it is a desire for the personal experience of religious ideals that leads them to hurt the body. Experience, more than any doctrine, shows them that pain can make self-transcending realities accessible and vivid.[11]

The message in the painting is life (ecos) combined with love (eros) creates a transcendent experience through bondage ropes and inversion. One can also infer that someone must have tied the goddess to the wheel, and the question provokes the viewer to ask who and why. I want to leave these questions open to my viewer to discover answers. The separate parts of the self become the One Self when both the masculine (bull horns) and feminine (the female figure and the wheel of life) are integrated through self-individuation, altered states of consciousness, or sexual union.[12]

My point of view on bondage is unique since it comes from a feminine perspective in a performance art form almost wholly described by men despite female participation. I view Shibari as a perfect way to convey both the light and dark aspects of the goddess. A bondage scene can be a serious playground where expressing emotion, wild sensuality, and embodied wisdom come together with another person through trust, communication, surrender, and intimate connection. Even though I initially hired models to pose for my goddess deck paintings, I realized I would need to use photos taken of my own body as references for my oil paintings since bondage can be dangerous. I also realized performing and painting my own experiences of being bound in ropes gave me a means for empathically representing my visions and ideas about the dark goddess. So not only could I illustrate the physical beauty of rope ties on my body, I could accurately convey the amount of pressure that rope bondage has on my flesh. Despite the appearance, rope bondage (kinbaku) is a caring, consensual form of erotic play that gives me an opportunity to experience intense emotions and interpersonal connection.[13] The experience has led to my psychological growth and awareness. Every scene I create with my team is different and provides new opportunities for communion and self-knowledge.

Ropes 1 is a closer examination of my body’s response to the pain of ropes through natural morphine-like pain-inhibiting substances such as enkephalins, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin. In Ropes 1, I had just finished a bondage scene where I was tied and suspended in three different poses over a two-hour period. The removed ropes are on the ground behind me. There are rope marks on my chest to indicate the amount of pressure sustained from the rope ties. The remaining red ropes in the painting are still tightly bound to my leg. As in my previous paintings, the red nails, stilettos, and nude female figure all support my views of a confident, sex-positive female role model. In Ropes 1, I also explore the power of choice. I choose what I wear or do not wear in a performance. Binding my body may include temporarily losing my physical freedom. I enter into a state of altered consciousness called “subspace” where I feel safe, relaxed, and deeply connected to my rope partner. Subspace is defined as a type of altered consciousness characterized by diminished ego awareness, less cognitive behavior and inability to verbalize.[14] It can best be described as an altered state of mind that the submissive partner or “sub” goes into; in this case, I am the “sub.” My emotional reaction to the pressure of ropes with or without suspension can go from pain to joy to spiritual revelation. As a masochist, I can withstand and choose to be in a level of pain that sends me into a feeling of ecstatic bliss that might feel painful or traumatize other people.[15] As I further explore bondage, it becomes a profound personal journey.

In the years since, I have endured three life-changing surgeries to help me walk again and heal chronic pain from a total hamstring avulsion and genetic hip dysplasia. When I was almost finished painting Phoenix Rising my house burned down from an electrical fire started at my neighbor’s home. It seems more than coincidental that my physical life would so profoundly change as I literally built anew out of the ashes. The phoenix rising story from ancient Greece was about the new life of a mythical, long-lived bird that is reborn again and again from the ashes of her previous life to transcend and transmute her previous identity. Phoenix Rising is another painting where I focused on the beauty of rope ties and their artistic interplay with the beauty of the human body. Here my human figure bound in ropes symbolizes the power of the goddess to surrender, then rise to new levels of wisdom and self-awareness.

In current times, the concept of a female goddess representing wisdom is shadowed by the masculine forms of divine intelligence represented by male gods. I believe the idea of divine feminine wisdom needs to be brought back as a relatable icon of feminine power. I would not have been able to emotionally transcend my physical pain and personal losses if I had not developed a personal philosophy to overcome them. The healing art of movement and natural states of altered reality have given me a pathway to universal knowledge in the form of cosmic consciousness.[16] The only way I can manage the pain and loss has been by diving into the suffering, feeling it through my whole body and then transcending the pain through my artwork, movement, and altered states of consciousness.

Phoenix Rising is also about radiant inner passion expressed as pure love. The goddess in mythology often represents beauty and radiance. Radiance is heat or light reflected or emitted by something and is much deeper than beauty on the outside. For instance, I radiate when I take care of my body, authentically express myself, and offer my feminine energy as an expression of love to my creative partner, my photographer. I believe true radiance and beauty emanate from the soul when we give and receive love. Who I love and how I love is an empowered transformational choice. In this painting, I painted the background dark to dramatize the lighting coming up from under my torso. This bright lighting is symbolic of the passion I feel and symbolizes the love I have for humanity, animals, the planet, and my rope partner. My expression is calm, and I am in a peaceful altered state of awareness. Like the phoenix rising, I have transcended each challenging experience by creating, honoring, and then expressing a more authentic version of myself.

As soon as I think I have my identity and life figured out, a new challenge emerges. If I survive the ordeal, I become a more empowered individual. My painting Spiritual Inversion represents the integration of the light and dark aspects of the divine feminine in union with the masculine. For me, this painting is a joyous act of surrender into the earthly human limitations of pain felt in the body. I transcend the pain of the rope binds into an ecstatic otherworldly oneness that dissolves human existence. The performance and the resulting painting are symbolically healing the psychological separation I feel in a human body when I forget my connection with the transcendent nature of my own existence.

The painting’s centered composition heightens the luminosity and importance of the figure through the use of chiaroscuro. My figure is bound from toe to head with red rope to symbolize life force energy and blood. The hanging body is still so that the viewer does not know if she is dead or alive or between life and death. Intuitively, the viewer may realize an inversion pose is dangerous. When I was performing this pose, I was inverted for at least eight minutes and went into an altered state of consciousness, the moment when the pain of being bound was transcended and I became a spiritual being in a human body.

I have discovered through my research there is a universal perspective that integrates both god and goddess within men and women. Much is already known about the masculine aspects of god. Very little is known about the feminine aspects of goddess. I believe the path forward is learning universal truths about the goddess to better understand ourselves and each other. If I had not questioned my own self-identity and instead stayed within the narrowly defined cultural and religious beliefs of my own tribe, I would have remained confused about my feminine power as a woman.

[1] Kevin Hunter, A Beginner’s Guide to the Four Psychic Clare Senses: Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Claircognizance, Clairsentience (Warrior of Light Press, 2017), 1.

[2] Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (HarperCollins, 1991), 12, 82.

[3] Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (HarperCollins, 1991), 140.

[4] John Oscar Lieben, Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers and Philosophers: Secrets of Harmonic Creation (Inner Traditions, 2018), 2.

[5] Zurbaran was a renowned Spanish painter who used a combination of realism and religious iconography to idealize the visions, miracles and ecstatic expression of saints, apostles and monks.

[6] Chiaroscuro contrasted light, shadows and tenebrism to create dramatic illumination.

[7] In Tibetan Buddhism, Tantric practice is the third major yana (raft to enlightenment) and enables one to reach nirvana in a single lifetime through all the energies latent in the human make-up, those of the body included, in service to the spiritual quest (Smith 140).

[8] In Jungian psychology the two aspects of the self that come together to form the One Self are a union of both the feminine anima aspects and masculine animus aspects (Jung 268).

[9] Jessica Smith, "The Kinky Female Mind: Why Women Fantasize About Rape and BDSM" Sexography Online Magazine (2020). https://medium.com/sexography/the-kinky-mind-why-women-fantasize-about

[10] Altered states of consciousness and the use of pain have been induced throughout human history through the use of mind-altering plants, pharmaceuticals, sex, dancing, chanting, self-mutilation, sadomasochism, meditation and prayer (Glucklich 11-12).

[11] Ariel Glucklich, Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul (Oxford University Press, 2001), 207.

[12] Self-individuation is a process by which psychologist Carl Jung described how personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness to reveal one’s whole personality (Jung 170).

[13] Shibari more recently evolved into a practice called Kinbaku or erotic rope art (Master “K” 30).

[14] Miller, Philip and Molly Devo, Screw the Roses and Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism (Mystic Rose Books, 1995), 227.

[15] A masochist is someone who enjoys receiving mental, emotional, or physical pain (Miller 232).

[16] Cosmic consciousness is an interconnected way of knowing through a spiritual life rather than a factual understanding (Bucke 318).

Meaning of six of my artworks