[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="648" caption=""Snow Dervish" © Mairin Kareli 2009"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Detail of "Snow Dervish""][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Detail of "Snow Dervish""][/caption]

She is the storm that rolls in from the west, covering the sky with a thick, grey, winter blanket.  Her winds swirl a dervish of prismatic flakes down through the heavens.  Cyrstalized water decorates our world, coats the ground, trims tree branches with icy lace.  She is the winter storm; feirce yet posessing that magical stillness that is only experiencened on a Winter's night, as the snow quiets our world.   A sister of the moon, she is also able to cast the world in a pearly glow, and she dances in her delicate downpour, illuminated by the extraordinary light that only a snowy night posesses.  She is a winter storm, a snow dervish, dancing the cold skies of this earth.   For more information or to purchase, click HERE.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="576" caption="Finished Painting "Faerie Dust""][/caption]

Here she is!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="576" caption="Detail of "Faerie Dust""][/caption]

I initally titled this piece "Pollen Faerie"  because pollen is a kind of magical "dust of nature" that creates fruits and seeds and vegetable abundance.  This is what I think of when I think of pollen, and fat bumble bees in fragrant flowers on a summers day.  However, many people I talked to associate pollen with itchy eyes, sneezing, and feeling miserable, so I decided to change the title to: Faerie Dust.  She is on Display inside The Yogic Lounge in downtown Reno, 100 N. Arlington.  She is also on sale on my website.  I am making open edition 8X10 prints, and limited edition Giclee prints which will be on sale soon.  All will be available at the Faerieworlds festival (July 31-August 2) for sure.

So here is the latest painting!  I've come up with "Woman of Birds and Flowers" as the title ... I'm not sure it's right.  It's an OK title ... suggestions??  Let me know if you have any good ideas.  I really don't like titling my work.  If I knew what I wanted to say with words why would I have painted the painting?  Any way HERE IT IS!!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="377" caption="Full Painting"][/caption]

Yeah, first painting I've finished in 2008!!  (I know, I know, 2008 is almost over...took me long enough)  Here are some pics of me working on it from earlier this year, and then the finished painting.  If anyone is interested it isn't up on the website yet, I have to get it professionally photographed first, but you can email me.  There has already been some interest in this piece, I took it on the road with me this summer, unfinished.  I painted on it a little while vending.  Painting in front of your booth attracts a bit of attention.



So this painting started as a creative expansion on the idea of the Bubble Garden painting.  Both of these pieces were inspired by getting in the bath and watching the little bubbles of oxygen form on my skin, and by jumping into a cool creek on a hot summer day, the feeling of the air forced into the water with my body swirl up and around me and the cool crisp water touching my skin.  And inspired by imagining what a mermaid's garden might be like, and by all the hours I spent in the pool/lake/river as a kid (and as an adult).

[/caption] This is the standard what-this-painting-means disclaimer: These are the events and thoughts that led me to paint this piece. I do not think however, that this in any way means other interpretations or meanings seen by others are not valid or real. I think symbolic information resonates its history in a subconscious way. Which parts become conscious is different in each person. Ok, enough said, this painting entitled "What I Know," is a self portrait I painted as a visual expression of what I wanted to accomplish by starting my business. I love to draw and paint and make images. (though on a different note, for another topic, painting is also hard and frustrating, but somehow, in a good way) When I paint, and the work just builds up in the closet, it doesn't feel right. It seems a natural part of a paintings life-cycle is to go out into the world, find an audience, and effect said audiences' life. In a way, starting the business was the paintings' idea as much as it was mine. I started this business in the hope that my images could find their place in the world and I could do what makes me happiest--for a living. This painting is me creating my business, my life, my reality, the way that I want it. This painting is me taking "what I know" and using it to make my world. That is what the ball of light is: the idea of, the vision of, my life as a successful artist. All the threads coming into it, and connected to it, are the connections one makes with people and the universe to weave ones' reality, in this case my dream. As the dream is woven in to reality, the light burns brighter, and joy, happiness, beauty, and magic are attracted to it. These are the hummingbirds. "Hummingbird can fly in any direction-- up, down, backwards, and forwards. Hummingbirds can also hover in one spot and appear motionless." (p. 213*) Hummingbirds are magical creatures able to move is such a radical way they seem transmute and transform the space around them as they move. Creating one's life as one wants it is a kind of alchemy, transforming the space around oneself, and it is freedom, the ability to move any way one desires, to create whatever one wants. I was always qouted Joesph Campbell as a child and told I should "follow my bliss. Hummingbird is attracted to beauty, and follows the tracks of a soul following its bliss. "Because of their magical qualities, Hummingbird feathers have been used for a millennium in the making of love charms. It is said that Hummingbird conjures love as no other medicine does, and that Hummingbird feathers open the heart. Without an open and loving heart, you can never taste the nectar and pure bliss of life." (213*) Of course I also hope that when other people look at this painting they don't see me. I hope they see themselves and the possibility to create their own life as they want it, their own dream, their own vision. *Both quotes are from Medicine Cards - The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson