From Darkness She Brings Light/Marilyn Watkins and the Transformatives
©2002 by Sandra Brandenburg
MedioCom
Categories: Art; California
Mandalas, angels, and journeys from dark into light; these are the images of Marilyn Watkins' art. The mandalas are often personal commissions and are done with pencil on charcoal paper; the soft colors over the dark background make a strong statement. According to the dictionary a mandala represents the effort to reunify the self. The images within the circle are varied, sometimes evoking the traditions of an American Indian Medicine Wheel. At other times she portrays a red-headed woman, symbolic of feminine power, the moon which represents the Mother, or healing hands.
"It comes from Jung's concept of creating a Sacred space. The circle represents a container for the self...It symbolizes various levels of awareness in the individual as well as the energy that unifies and heals. When I do a Mandala for someone I want to use healing symbols so the person can look at it and use it to move beyond certain issues in their life.
"I did one for a woman who grew up in Hawaii and had a Native American heritage. She wanted a white horse, red earth, sun, moon, and ocean -- all powerful symbols of freedom and protection. I surrounded it with symbols from her Native American background."
Many of Watkins' paintings show angels; big, powerful, black angels who come sweeping in with their great wings and hover protectively. She sees these as symbols of spirituality, not exclusively linked with Christianity.
"I feel that my spirituality isn't just the Christian perspective. It incorporates the Goddess, Christ, and the Buddha. Those three are the basis for my spirituality. I've done work with Shamanic journeys, American Indian healing ceremonies, and Goddess rituals. I feel a wholeness I've never felt before."
Like many another artist, Marilyn Watkins started painting early, but her path was not direct. Her parents didn't want her to pursue the uneven life of an artist, and urged her to become a teacher, instead. While she once resented that decision, lately in her career she has realized it was the right path for her. Now she combines the teacher and the artist, and recently completed a Master's Degree in Art, Psychology and Spirituality.
"I've always painted; my parents were both artists... My mother's father painted in his retirement, and he really inspired me. I remember he used to walk the beach in New Hampshire every day, and he'd take notes. He never painted on location, but he could go home and paint exactly what he'd seen -- he knew the ocean so well. I was always surrounded by art, and my parents encouraged me to enter art contests.<P>
"I taught art for a while. I also worked with mentally retarded adults in a workshop. I developed a project with those disabled adults where I would put twenty colors on the table, and invite them to come in and paint. I didn't say anything; I just observed them. It was amazing, how much of their personality, their way of being in the world, was expressed and conveyed without saying a word.
"I went back to college and got my degree in Special Education, and now I work with disabled students. I don't have the opportunity to do a lot of art in my teaching, but I enrolled in an expressive arts therapy credential program, and I feel as if I'm coming back full circle to where I was when I was seventeen. Then, I didn't have enough self confidence to do what I wanted to do. I never had that drive, but now I know what's exciting in my life, and what draws me. It's using art as a means of learning about and expressing my real self and helping others to do the same."
As with everyone, Watkins path to enlightenment hasn't been a direct one. In fact, for awhile she shut her spirit guide in a closet. After painting a woman with outstretched arms, welcoming her into an embrace, she couldn't figure out why she had painted this figure; it didn't fit, at the time, with the aura of depression and chaos that surrounded the artist. So into the closet she went...for two months. Then, in a guided meditation, she saw the woman in her painting as her personal guide, waiting to take her hand. That guide has led her back, to her earlier work.
"I've always painted, and my early work was very abstract. I used white as a color and I always loved bright colors. I used orange and purple together, which most people didn't do. My early pictures had a real design quality to them. I'm going back to that place, now.
"Once, when I was going through a personal crisis, I would go out to The Veteran's Hospital in Livermore. It's way out in the hills. At dusk, twenty or thirty deer would come down into the grounds to feed. I'd sit in the middle of the field and be surrounded by these animals; if I sat very still then they wouldn't run away. Going through this period in my life and feeling betrayed and deserted by God, the male god I was brought up to believe in, I needed to find a new spiritual strength. I had to connect to the earth, the universe, the great mother. It was very nurturing for me to go out and sit on the earth among those animals; I felt as if I was being taken care of by something more powerful than me."
"The experience of being with myself with less fear has led to the creation of art work that is more and more spacious. What I hope others will feel when viewing my artwork is a sense of leaving one's self behind; of presence, peace and awe, a state often felt when experiencing nature.
"My artwork is autobiographical; my search to find myself, a process of exploration. I began to see that the qualities I attributed to the female figures I've painted are really qualities I possess. I recently completed three large abstract paintings. When I looked closer, an owl appeared. It became a guardian, a holder of feminine energy."
"I want my work to take people to a sacred place, deep within, where they find a universal truth and a connection to the divine."
There we have the essence of the transformative artist, on a path with an ever-growing and changing life. What happens within is reflected in Watkins' paintings. From learning technique, as expressed in photographic work, to the healing hands in some of the mandalas, and on to powerful protective angels; art may not imitate life, but it does express it.
Send Marilyn Watkins an e-mail letter to: marilart@prodigy.net.
This article provided by MedioCom.
- Log in to post comments