Mandala and Rose - 1982 -
Jane EnglishSee also:
Mandala and Rose - 1982 -
Jane English
I saw this mandala in a dream. Someone handed me an orange rose and said the orange peatal of the mandala is mine. there is wholeness in the un-differentiated white llight in the center. But much more interesting is the wholeness of the different colors fitting together into a beautiful form. Perhaps this website is just such a beautiful form, one created by people with diverse experiences of cesarean birth.
9" square - watercolor
Ether Demon - 1977- Jane English
In an inner vision I saw this bear on a snowy cold mountain. After feeling much shivering and fear he became a cozy furry place from which to appreciate the beauty of the cold landscape. I associated this experience with the anesthesia, ether, that my mother had at my birth.
8"x11" - felt markers
Womb Fire - around 1981 - Rosemary Jellison
The non-labor cesarean born artist who did this painting associates it with the anaesthesia at her birth. It is her version of the ether demon.
approx 18"x24" - watercolor
Wound - 1981 - Rosemary
Jellison
Lotus - 1985 - Rosemary Jellison
These two paintings are powerful images of tranformation. While painting Wound, the artist was aware of its connection to inner work she was doing on anger and on her cesarean birth. The second painting, Lotus, she did intuitively and was not aware of it as a transformation of the first until that was pointed out by Jane English during a visit. In Lotus the wound is transformed into a gateway for rebirth into a new life of psychological and spiritual freedom, symbolized by the buttersly and the lotus flower.
approx 18"x24" - watercolor
A conversation between Jane English and Rosemary Jellison (Hayes), and black and white pictures of more of her artwork are in Different Doorway, pages105-111.
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Aztec Priest - 1977 - Jane English A cesarean birth can seem to be a resonance of an experience from a past life. This painting came from an experience where images of a priest at an Aztec sacrifice alternated with memory of the obstetrician at the artist's cesarean birth. An art therapist suggested the artist project a slide of the painting onto her face and then photograph that, symbolically releasing being the victim and re-owning some of the power of the priest/obstetrician. 9"x12" - felt markers |
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Untitled 1 - 1975 - Jane English Several writers have noted that cessarean born people may have difficulty feeling connection to ground, with owning their legs and feet since they did not successfully push their way down the birth canal. These two paintings are images of a transformation wherein identification with the head, with light, is torn open. The emotion that emerges, symbolized by the blood droplets, becomes water that nourishes the tree of life and the whole body. The strong, rooted tree then supports a phoenix-like rebirth and a connection back to the light of spirit, all the while connected with the physical world. These images are not limited to the birth process; they are archetypal, and this process of death and rebirth happens over and over, both within and between lifetimes. 12"x18" - felt markers |
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"This is cesarean birth." - 1979 9"x12" colored pencil and felt markers approx 18"x24" - watercolor |
These two paintings continue the theme of connection between heaven and earth. The upper drawing is from a dream in which the dreamer as a small naked person was pulled out of a dark shape as the man said,"This is cesarean birth." Then she found herself being pressed into the earth by a sun god in order to experience and release all the fear and pain associated with the birth. (see Different Doorway p.56 )
After doing many paintings, the lower one was the first one in which the artist shows the element earth - in the rock towards which the rock is reaching. (see Different Doorway, p. 111) |
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