Welcome

To my web site. I hope that it will provide you with a better viewing experience of my artwork. If you have visited before you might notice that I didn't carry everything over from the prior site. However, my starting point is still my love for the transformative power and magical nature of the arts and its place between science and religion - the objective and the subjective, the known and the mysterious. As Albert Einstein said, "Mystery is the source of all true science and art."

To this end, I continue to paint the sacred human form and to reinterpret certain iconic metaphors from mankind's mystical and mythological cultures such as my own Mesoamerican culture. Perhaps for this reason, I was drawn to the recurrence throughout human history of the eagle and the serpent. In the Ancient Near East, it started in the Mesopotamian culture with Hermes Trismegistus (Mercury) who carries a caduceus (short staff) that consist of a thick staff, two interweaving serpents and a set of eagle wings at its head. The eagle represented heaven and God's divine grace. The Bible refers to the eagle as the messenger of God, and as a link between heaven on earth. In Exodus 19:4, you read..."I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself."

On the other hand, the serpent represents the ways of the world. The Bible advises to be wise as a serpent and because of this it became an important alchemical symbol. The English metaphysical poet John Donne used "Crucified Serpent" as a title of Jesus Christ. As I was musing about this, I happened to find an image of the Mexican national symbol of the eagle with the serpent in its beak. It was captivating because it appeared to me as the perfect representation of the fusion of the two polarities. The divine and the worldly, the higher and the lower, gravity and levitation.

In the Aztec myth, there is a violent encounter between them. I don't see it that way. In my eyes, I saw them as complementing each other. Yet, I can see the eagle devouring the serpent in the way that light dispels darkness. Thus, in this obra I have deconstructed and reconstructed the symbol from an artistic and mystical perspective. Such an insight I found in Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." "I myself belong to the causes of the eternal recurrence, I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent.... to speak again the word of the great noon of earth and man, to proclaim the overman again to men."