seven

My paintings investigate where the inner world of spirit and feeling and the outer landscape intersect.  For the past six years I’ve been layering flowers over constellations from the night sky.  At first I worked in a square format with the images fixed in place.  Then I began allowing the images to drip.  Finally I began painting on rectangles and added a diagram of the movement of the stars.  For the current paintings I use both flowers and leaves layered with the constellations as they appear in April and October.  Called “Seven” they celebrate the Pleiades and seven biblical heroines.

I’m not a religious person although I grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  That was why it was easy to make the leap from the Pleiades referred to as the “Seven Sisters” in English to seven biblical heroines.  But the spark for these paintings was also learning about an ancient Druid myth where the veil dividing the living from the dead is at its thinnest at the end of April and October.  

I want my paintings to be both beautiful and mysterious.  I try to achieve this using flowers and leaves and constellations.  The flowers and leaves establish a sense of time and place for me in my daily routine while the sky surrounds and shelters me.  As someone who thrives on being outdoors and responds deeply to the changing seasons and night sky, I wanted to locate the heroines in these images.

Carol Baum