Dryads

Dryad by Tanya Torres, drawing 

Dryad by Tanya Torres, drawing 

These are some drawings to open the mind for new large paintings.

First, they will be paintings on tile for next week's Fiesta de Flores at the New York Botanical Garden.

These are from the sketch book, made to call on the dryad spirits for inspiration and a little push forward!

Cacibayagua in a Music Video by Saxophonist Luis Rosa

Cacibayagua, Oil on canvas, 20" x 16", 2012.

One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is the opportunity to collaborate with people you don't even know nor would hope to meet in normal circumstances. This morning I received a wonderful email from a musician in Ohio asking me if he could use the piece Cacibayagua in his video. Of course! Nothing gives me more pleasure than the opportunity to collaborate with other artists, each person doing what we love. Here it is: Luis Rosa performing a composition by Felipe Fournier titled Atabex; Luis Rosa - Arrangement & Performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo5miBiLXOg

Cacibayagua

Cacibayagua por Tanya Torres

Cacibayagua por Tanya Torres, oil on canvas, 20" x 16", 2012.

"From Cacibayagua came the majority of the people who settled the island." Fray Ramón Pané 

The very first poem of Marianela's book Diosas de la Yuca, contains this quote. 

I thought the cave Cacibayagua, from which the original taínos of La Española, sister island of Puerto Rico, are said to have come, might be a place of earth and river water from whose veins flows life.

I was sitting in a church, listening to a group of monks sing. A group of nuns were sitting next to me praying and adoring the Eucharist. While meditating, I saw in my mind some paintings like this one, but much bigger, and depicting the whole body full of flowers and creatures and plant life. Although they look nothing like the Virgin Mary, I know she is present in them.

Don't most of the miraculous images of the Virgin Mary appear by water? Isn't she the Star of the Sea, Stella Maris? Don't people go to her shrine in Lourdes to bathe in the blessed water of her grotto and heal? Water, cave, virgin goddess, like the ancient Goddess.

As writer Marion Zimmer Bradley would have said, "all goddesses and all gods are as one." The Taíno had their own. My european ancestors had theirs. I honor them all.

***

I hope the images of Heaven and Earth will help bring more peace, love and joy into our world through a different viison of the old ideas that grow out of the human heart, and are ever present in our perception of the world as human beings.

Reproductions available in my Etsy Shop

Atabey Gives Birth to the Coquí

Atabey da a luz al Coquí por Tanya Torres

Atabey Gives Birth to the Coquí by Tanya Torres, Oil on Canvas, 20" x 16", 2012. 

I wanted to paint Atabey, Taíno mother of all creatures, earth goddess, mother of the god, giving birth to the coquí, the most representative creature of the island of Puerto Rico.

But she began looking like the Ánima Sola or Lonely Soul, a Catholic image brought from Europe that has evolved in America to become syncretized with some of the native and African religions. She has become a sort of goddess of love spells.

My Atabey passionately loves the earth, life, birth. In Taíno mythology, she gave birth to the "main god" Yukiyú or Yucahu. And so, she is the Mother of God, and the mother of all creatures. How might a goddess give birth? A fire that does not burn, a light that does not blind, but imparts life.

Her little child still sings for us every evening, reminding us of who lives within our own heart.

Common Coquí © Public Domain

Reproductions and Greeting Cards available in my Etsy Shops: http://www.etsy.com/shop/tanyaetorres http://www.etsy.com/shop/YellowButterflyShop

Blue Hair

Blue Hair, Acrylic and Water-soluble crayon on canvas, 16" x 20", 2008

Poem: "Fly, Soul, Fly" from Destellos de Sofía, a new handmade book of poetry

I created this painting in 2008 from a drawing I had done about a year earlier, at night, together with the one titled "Sunflowers." Then one day, a friend called me to bring some paintings to be exhibited at the Community Board office, and I decided to paint this canvas with materials that could dry faster than oil paint, my usual medium of choice. I used acrylic paint and my other favorite material, water-soluble crayons. The result was pleasing to me, a painting that I have had hanging in my own living room until a couple weeks ago, when I brought it back up to my studio in the hope of tuning into it again for the new series that I have been calling "Sacred Garden" and "Goddesses of El Yunque."

For years, I have been wanting to get closer to my own culture through painting, but in a way that did not involve the usual symbols of nationality or a social/political perspective. I wanted a symbol that I could create within my own style and that would be sincere, universal and spiritual. So when two wonderful women somewhat and somehow identified this image with a Taíno goddess, I felt that I had found the connection between my own style, my desire to create something related to my culture and the universality I strive for in all my work.

Blue Hair then becomes the inspiration for a new series of work. I look forward to painting large canvases with one or more figures accompanied by animals and plants from the island of Puerto Rico and maybe the rest of the Greater Antilles, drawing on Taíno symbolism and my own mythology/iconography.

As I always tell my son, "Great Goddess of History, help me!" This time, I think she heard me!

Eros and Psyche

It's been years since I learned about Eros and Psyche, so long ago I can't remember why I became interested in the topic. I'm sure it had something to do with a longing for the idea that they represent, the union of love and the soul.

When we think of Eros, we mostly relate this character of Greek mythology with erotic love, and he certainly has something to do with it, but it is also significant that in the end of his story, he is not alone, but joined by Psyche, the soul. One is not complete without the other.

Just like each of our own souls when they are silenced by the logic of the mind, Psyche had lack of faith and because of that, lost her beloved. But once she realized her loss, she did all she could to win him back and had to pass immense tests of strength in order to reach him. In the end, she becomes immortal, because of love.

I began this watercolor years ago, together with others that remain unfinished and a series of canvases inspired by Indian miniatures illustrating the Kama Sutra, which I keep but never have painted. This year, I decided it is time to take Eros out of the drawers of forgetfulness, which is why I am publishing this watercolor so we can all get inspired to let our own Eros and Psyche find each other in our own heart.

***

This watercolor is available as well as prints and cards of this and other images of Eros and Psyche when you visit this blog's special shop page: http://tanyatorres.blogspot.com/p/shop.html

and take a look at the image of MM and JC, do you notice? I did not realize it when I composed Surrender... but the placement of the figures is almost the same!

Sacred Garden: Her Spirit Remains (Behind the Yuca plant with Reinita and Coquí)

Yuca grows in this garden, visited by animals, guarded by the divine ancestors who inhabit the grayer shades of life within. Made of water, leaves, roots, she might be as green as the forest itself, or as blue as the evening sky. Or she might be transparent, like a veil. She is undoubtedly humid, and life grows out of her heart.

My Guadalupe

"I don't believe in anything, but I believe in the Guadalupe..."

A phrase for thought by a writer and friend.

A writer said this to me, but I'm tempted to say that I have heard this same phrase from at least two other people this year. It is a phrase with which I fully identify, and a guiding principle in painting this Virgin of Guadalupe for Reverend Winnie and St. Mark's in the Bowery in gratitude for her support of Song of the Magdalene. And in gratitude to Guadalupe Tonantzin. It was at St. Marks where a few years ago I attended a dedication of an Aztec dance group to the Virgin of Guadalupe. I had never paid much attention to her, but that day she was there as the invocation for the Elements began and continued with the ancestral dancing that the group would perform in her honor. That night I brought her flowers.

I think we are all willing to bring her flowers because we can also call her Tonantzin, which in Aztec mythology and among present day Nahuas,means 'Our Revered Mother'. The faith and reverence so many people place on her is transmitted even to those of us who have a hard time believing in anything concrete.

And even when we don't believe in anything (or when we believe in everything, which is more or less the same thing...) mythologies and the truths they contain, whether they come in the context of organized religion or of personal realization, are as valid as any other belief system when they provide hope and comfort, sight and wisdom. Tonantzin is revered for her wisdom in knowing the hearts of her children.

I painted her with the colors I associate with wisdom and with the Earth: yellow, brown, terracotta, and gold, and a bluish green for hope. She is the Mother (Earth), and she is meeting the Father (Sky, White Light) without taking her gaze away from those who look up to her. Whether we dance or paint, play music or write, whether we believe or don't believe, we know that with her loving smile she will accept our gifts of joy.