This is my third digital painting, I spent quite a while on it. It combines two different moods, moonlight, sunlight and, nested inside the trunk, my Blue Bird. I had great fun painting this, enhancing the lights step by step, following the paths over the bridge or past the Vila – a Slavic fairy – in the tree. Either way, you have to pass by the mysterious figure standing by the tree in the middle. This figure is Psyche. Her being is most radiant when she is veiled because no image comes to distract us. She is Soul, permeating everything around her, enchanting, or leading to madness if taken too literally. Psyche’s sometimes represented as a moth or butterfly because she’s a symbol of transformation. Perpetual transformation. To take Psyche as a guide is to unlearn everything, and be truthful to the inner spark, no matter what others might say. Ask for a direction of Psyche and you will see that she will reply by way of dreams.

One thing I would like to do one day is to continue the painting on both sides. You can do that endlessly. But considering that a single painting takes me an average of 3 weeks, it would probably take me a whole year to build this world of paths. It’d be pretty cool though.

I wish this painting could convey all the smells that arise on a hot summer day when the rain starts falling. These arousing, earthy smells… Also the sounds, this concert of  lapping, splashing and pattering. And the frog’s song. Every zen garden must have a resident frog. There is no more delicious background for a cup of tea (lapsang souchong of course) than rain falling on a zen garden.  A true moment of peace in the green dusky light.