Art can have such different meanings and impacts on each of us, based on our different experiences. So, I shared these angels as the finished cards first in Part 1 of this post. I share the symbolism and process of creating each in this follow-up post. I took this approach to give you, the viewer, a chance to have your own experience with the angels first (in Part 1). Then, if you’re interested in how and why they evolved as they did, you’re invited to read more here.
As mentioned in Part 1, this shape and the word “heartlight” have been in my thoughts for a few years now. Angels are messengers and these particular angels seem to me to be messengers of heartlight. The body appears in the shape of a heart, representing love and life to me, and the head is represented as a flame shape shining light (representing love, life and wisdom to me). I think of the action of lighting one candle from another and how we are all connected with a similar life force.
It has amazed me how these angels have evolved, seemingly on their own, to be these messengers. I am grateful to have been blessed to have a creative conversation with them as they emerged. The serendipity and synchronicity experienced as part of the creative process has been quite moving. It surprised me to have several of the angels as I worked on them in a particular week end up incorporating some aspect of the Documented Life Project (DLP) weekly prompt without even realizing it! I recently went to the DLP site to check the prompts to start playing catch up and “coincidentally” some of the angels were created using some aspect of the weekly challenge at the time I was working on them. I mention the specific challenges in the descriptions below. Perhaps more than a coincidence!
I wanted to represent the beauty of diversity and various cultures by including different skin tones, facial shapes, features, and details, eye and hair colors. I’ve attempted to embrace imperfection with a style based on folk, whimsical, and impressionistic art because it feels more free, forgiving, and possible than a realistic style for me. For each angel, I share the notes written when drawing the initial sketch (which I did not end up referring back to after cutting the angels out), the finished card and an explanation as best I can.
Let Your Heartlight Shine
This angel was one of the first ones drawn for this holiday series. She is holding a candle to represent the idea of the angels being messengers of light and the word and shape that keep going through my thoughts. Her hair was painted the colors of flames. Her eyes are blue like the color of the hottest flames in a fire. The message is also an echo from the song “this little light of mine“. The angel seems to remind me to let my light shine and that the light comes from the heart. I even have visions of light shining out in amazing rays from the heart, both from my own and others. The candle also represents the action of lighting one candle from another to share and pass on the flame/fire. The halo obviously represents an angelic being, yet it also symbolizes the light the flame gives off. The background reminds me of the universe/cosmos, infinity and mystery, as well as the light of the stars, that shine and guide.
Embrace the Present
This angel emerged holding an hourglass with sand and I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I knew she was trying to say something about time. I even thought, maybe she should have been father time and not female, but the heartlight shape that guided all of these angels clearly had a dress/skirt on. I set her aside for a while unfinished waiting for her message to come through. I realize now that all of these angels probably symbolize the feminine aspect of the divine that I often feel is missing in many of the religious stories of the modern world. I don’t imagine that God has a gender the way we speak as male or female, he or she, father or mother, God or Goddess. I did not intend these angels being feminine to be making a statement of any kind. This is just the shape that keeps coming to me and I feel more comfortable attempting female faces at this point. I live and love in a household with my husband and twin boys so perhaps I just need the company of other females in my art for a little yin and yang balance. 😉 I think the words for this angel were the last to finally come to me and it felt like a big “of course!” moment. She is holding a measurement used for time and I need to remind myself constantly to be present. In addition, the aspect of Christmas as a time for gifts/presents seemed to encourage this message and also bring out the meaning of the present time being a present as a gift. So as we celebrate Christmas and exchange gifts, I want to remember to embrace the present moment for the gift that it is. I had to finish the other angel holding the actual gift with a bow on it before the message finally became clear for this angel holding the gift of time. The background for this one also reminds me of the universe/cosmos, infinity and mystery. The stars remind me of a saying that has helped me through hard and sad times, that “the stars still shine” in this present moment.
Love is the way
As usual with art that comes through me, this message, “Love is the way” is a reminder to myself regarding how I want to live and what priority I want to remember. It can be difficult sometimes to see past preconceptions and assumptions (based on both our personal experiences and teachings of our cultures) to remember that we all come from the same original source and are all having a life experience together. This angel is holding a heart with a crown to represent love as king/queen/ruler of sorts. Her wings were made in the shape of a heart and color red to represent love as well. Her dress is made from a map of the area near my actual home geographically to represent love as being home. It is painted green to bring in the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. Though I realize now, that green could also symbolize growth and abundance. The background is painted on a map with the holy lands. The maps and compass represent a way to find direction. When I finished the background, I discovered that same day that the DLP Week 47 challenge for the week was to “add a map of your state or the world.” I had just finished doing both with this angel! The background was painted blue to represent the sky and heavens with stars, among them, the star guiding wise men. While there are many references here to traditional Christmas/Christian ideas, I was careful to try to communicate a message that was not only/specific to “Christian” stories. The emphasis on “love” as opposed to “Jesus” is intentional, as I imagine that was Jesus’ emphasis as well. The bit of scripture from 1 Corinthians in the wing, “the greatest of these is love”, was also chosen to emphasize love as the focus. At Christmas, in my heart, I celebrate divine love, something that seems to me includes all of creation.
I really didn’t know what the message of this angel wanted to be initially. I just knew that I wanted to represent Mother Nature and the feminine Goddess quality of the divine. I also realized that all of these angels are also symbolic of Sophia/Wisdom in the Christian tradition and messengers of wisdom in general. This angel’s dress was painted in various shades of brown like a tree growing with a strong trunk and her hair is various shades of green like many trees when they flourish. Originally, I tried actual chicken feathers (donated by my chickens as they molt in the fall shedding feathers to replace them with others for winter) for her wings, but she seemed to want these fabric flower petals for wings instead. All of the angels are holding something in their hands so it seemed fitting for her to hold a bird nest and bird since they would be naturally at home in a tree. The message, “set love free”, took on more meaning to me after finishing the “love is the way” angel above. It seems to suggest to me to “set love free” from expectations, dogma, any particular group of people or place or conditions… to celebrate unconditional love. My husband once suggested that tolerance is what is really needed to live in harmony with others. My mother left these words for my children, “Give to others and respect their feelings. You will be loved and respected in return.” She also taught my children about the golden rule. This angel seems to embody all of these ideas and bits of wisdom as I consider love, tolerance, and respect to be aspects of a common idea. I was blessed to experience genuine unconditional love from my mother and this angel seems to represent that to me as well: love given freely (free of conditions). The sun seemed appropriate for mother nature and to encourage the tree angel to thrive. Subtle comments about love were added to the sun (“love shines”) and the background. “Faith, hope, love… the greatest of these is love” from 1 Corinthians in the background is to emphasize again the priority of love, over faith specifically, especially as it is sometimes interpreted to mean a specific religion. That particular scripture is also a big part of my personal history shared with friends and family and read in my wedding. My interpretation/understanding of Jesus’ teaching and message is quite different than that of my in-laws. We have had many discussions about this particular point, which really comes down to the word “only”. They believe that Jesus claimed that acceptance and belief in him as Lord and Savior was the only way to heaven. I imagine that Jesus intended love to be the way (of heavenly life, here and eternally), an unconditional way, and that his love is that way (that kind of love), which leaves no room for the condition of “only”. I imagine that Jesus meant to love and include everyone, all God’s children (and all of creation!), not divide people into “believers” and “non-believers” or a literal heaven and hell. These discussions and ideas seem to have influenced the messages of the 2 angels above. When celebrating Christmas, I am celebrating the message I imagine Jesus intended, one of love and living in harmony for all of creation. The heart by the angel’s eye was one of the last things added (after I thought it was already finished!). It seems to represent love as a tear and acknowledge the bittersweet nature of love. It reminds me of this quote from Kahlil Gibran: ‘When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.’
Weave Love
This angel reminds me most of an angelic form of wisdom, Sophia, for some reason. In high school, I recited the song “Tapestry” by Carole King as a poem in memory of my aunt, Denise Sears, who died at the age of 18 before I was born. She loved Carole King and James Taylor (and a priest named Mike) and planned her own funeral after being ill for a few years to include their music and be led by Father Mike. So this angel reminds me of her, whom I have often imagined as my guardian angel. She predicted that her first born niece/nephew would be a girl and bought a gift (praying hands) for me and had her mother write a letter to go with it before she died. The original of this angel will be a gift for my dad, Denise’s brother. When I initially did the sketch, none of the above had come to mind. I just had an image of an angel holding pieces of thread that represent the different choices (free will?) that make up our lives. Once the thread came to mind, the idea of a tapestry soon followed. I learned how to draw or “paint” with thread in a class I took at the folk school in February and decided to incorporate that technique with this angel. The skirt was cut from an old shirt of my mom’s. I learned that while I was sewing and painting this skirt, the DLP week 46 challenge was to use fabric! (This actually made 3 challenges that happened to be what I was doing during the week the challenge was posted with angels. The third was with the Thanksgiving angel that I posted recently.) I used the sewing machine to sew/”paint” the tree in the center of the skirt with variegated thread and add the leaves on the border of the skirt. I wanted the tree to be represented in different seasons so I used acrylic paint to add spring buds, summer leaves, fall leaves, and winter bare branches with snow flakes around them. The background fabric is blue to represent the sky. The sun painted on her shirt was meant to be the sun above the tree. Then, her forehead wanted a sun, too (symbolic of wisdom, light, third eye? and an ode to another culture). The two red cardinal birds flying near the tree may represent my parents. Again, nature influences the art significantly. Frequently, there seems to be more symbolism in my art than I even realize, at least initially, that sometimes appears to me much later (this happened to me earlier this week when it dawned on me that the words “let love grow” in a painting for my sister-in-law were also a prayer for the baby she was carrying to be healthy so our love could grow with him). This angel’s wings were made of lace to keep with the theme of thread/tapestry/sewing. I wasn’t sure what to do with her for a background and held the painted paper doll over several potential backgrounds before it finally dawned on me to use the tissue from a sewing pattern, keeping with the sewing theme, which I glued onto a piece of sheet music (a nod to the song by Carole King, which was now playing in my head as I worked with the angel). The word “guide” was already printed on the sewing pattern and left intentionally visible when painting the tissue to obscure some of the other sewing instructions. Angels as messengers may be considered guides or it could be a request for guidance to my soul and the divine. When I originally drew the sketch of this angel, the Pete Seeger and Byrds’ song based on scripture from Ecclesiastes came to mind, “to everything there is a season… turn, turn, turn” and this song seemed to combine in my head with the Carole King song while I was putting the angel on the background. So the message around the skirt is based on that song combination and became “Life is a tapestry of choices and seasons under heaven.” I debated whether to include the “under heaven” portion because I wasn’t sure I liked the way “under” could be taken, but I chose to trust the message the way it came. I imagine it being “within” heaven and heaven being all of creation making it seem to me that “life is a tapestry of choices and seasons within creation”, acknowledging the union of this life and the mystery beyond time and space (infinity and eternity). She seemed to have something else still to say and the words “weave love” came forth… seeming to reference “love” as the way/guide for choices and keeping with the theme of working with fabric with the term “weave”. Again, all these messages are reminders to myself (perhaps from the divine invited into my creative time?).
Untie the Ribbon
This angel became the messenger for the words I intentionally set out to have on a Christmas card initially: “Each day is a gift. Untie the ribbon.” She was the first one painted and cut out. The symbolism of her holding a gift box with ribbon tied into a bow seems obvious. I did tie a real bow with ribbon as opposed to painting one and glue it on. As with some of the other angels, I used glitter paint to add glimmer, though it doesn’t show up well in the scanned images. The gift and her wings shimmer in the original of this one. I don’t know why her hair wanted to pink or her dress blue. They just did. This was one of the last ones to finally be finished with a background. I couldn’t decide what to do. Then, I saw this corrugated cardboard from a recent package and thought it could symbolize a gift box. It was way too plain at first so I added the stars to the cardboard to represent gift wrapping. The angel seemed to want to become part of the package as I added stars to her skirt as well and ribbon to the background, almost in line with the gift package the angel is holding as if it is part of the bow on that smaller package as well. At some point over the few weeks that I was working on these angels, I wanted to somehow find a common aspect for the cards (in addition to them all being angels and in spite of them all being so different) so I ended up adding stars to all of them on the backgrounds. They were all started with the same general shape (the heartlight angel sketch) and all finished with a different common shape (stars).
I happily share art freely on the internet through this blog (thrivetrue.wordpress.com) and the Loving Road facebook page. Please feel free to share the links with others if you feel it could be inspirational or encouraging. I am also glad to offer these angels as high quality mini-prints/postcards in the Loving Rd etsy shop (the images on the blog have been saved at a much lower quality to reduce file size and increase speed/efficiency of files loading on the web). Giving thanks special offer in etsy store: 20% off anything in store use code “THANKYOU20″ (no quotation marks, no spaces, all caps, valid through Dec 1, 2014). A few of these angels are also featured in the Loving Ladies 2015 Calendar.
As we celebrate this holiday season, this is my prayer:
May we all find ways to celebrate life, love, and creation. May we live in harmony with one another, celebrating both our differences and our commonalities and realize our communion with everything. May our heartlight fill us with joy, love, and wisdom to be shared in this wonderful world we all call home. <3
Happy Holidays 🙂
PS – Enter the Heartlight Holiday Angels Give-Away from the Loving Road Facebook page! In the spirit of the season and giving away 1 set of these postcards (6 pack, $24 value). Simply SHARE the pinned post from facebook to enter. Name drawn on December 15th so they can be mailed before Christmas. Enjoying these monthly give-aways! As my mom said, “Give to others and respect their feelings. You will be loved and respected in return.” Wish I could afford to give more away and glad I can do this. * Happy Holidays! *
© Loving Rd by Julia Osterc – Please feel free to share the link to the blog post. Please do not copy or reproduce any portion of this post or the artwork without specific permission of the author and artist, Julia Osterc. Thank you.
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