Majestic Sagacity
The stag stands at the border between what is and what remembers—his right side facing turquoise explosion, paint splattered like broken sky, while his left gazes into actual forest where an elephant walks among trees that recall being rooted. Those antlers rise like branching thought, like the neural pathways wisdom carves through experience, each tine a decision point, a moment when understanding forked and grew. Majestic sagacity: the kind of wisdom that wears crown of bone, that stands visible and vulnerable, that doesn't hide its thinking. The deer carries a coin or medallion at its chest—payment for passage, perhaps, or talisman, or simply the weight we all carry of being witnessed and measured. Buddha's face emerges ghost-like in the upper atmosphere, suggesting that all wild things practice meditation without knowing the word, that standing still in forest while remaining utterly alert is its own form of enlightenment. The elephant in the collaged forest represents memory, family structures, matriarchal knowledge passed across generations—another kind of sagacity, communal rather than solitary. Where the deer's wisdom is the hermit's, earned through seasons of surviving alone, the elephant's is collective, stored in family bonds and ancestral routes. The turquoise suggests water and sky simultaneously, the elements the deer cannot fully enter, the elsewhere that frames all earthbound knowing. The painting understands that wisdom requires both: the rooted forest knowledge and the awareness of vast blue beyond trees, both the practical and the cosmic, both survival and significance. ```
Details
An original mixed media artwork, rich with surreal symbolism and tactile intrigue. Each layer is meticulously built upon a heavy-duty stretched canvas using a myriad of materials, inviting the viewer into a world of texture and depth. Created with professional archival paints and sealed for protection, this piece is designed to endure. The included collage elements are printed with archival inks on fine art papers, ensuring the vibrancy lasts for generations.Size
14x11Materials & Techniques
mediums/materials: phosphorescent paints, found objects, paper, wax, photo collage, oxidative inks, distress paint and inks, acrylic pouring, digitally altered images, acrylic paint, watercolor, spray paint, walnut ink, staining mediums, tissue paper, mica powders, glitter, heavy gel medium, gesso, pebeo prism and fantasy paints, ceramic paint, stained glass paint, alcohol inks, iridescent inks, distress crayons, charcoal, pastels, oil pastels, string, beads, jewelry, gems, chains, buttons, foils, newspaper, vinyl, plastic, walnut inks, india ink, colorshift paints and more!Hidden Images & Elements
The stag's antlers represent earned wisdom—male deer shed and regrow antlers annually, each year's growth larger and more complex if nutrition and health permit. They're both weapon and ornament, defense and display, suggesting how wisdom functions simultaneously as protection and attraction. The antlers also mirror tree branches and neural pathways, creating visual rhyme between forest structure, thought structure, and physical structure. The medallion or coin at the deer's chest could reference St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters who converted after seeing a crucifix between a stag's antlers, or it might represent value, worth, the price of wisdom or the payment required for transformation. Coins also suggest trade, exchange, the economy of experience. The elephant in the forest section represents different wisdom paradigm—elephants live in matriarchal groups, maintain complex social structures, remember water sources and migration routes across decades, teaching younger generations through example and guidance. This contrasts with the solitary buck's self-taught knowledge, learned through survival. The Buddha figure suggests that enlightenment and animal wisdom might not be separate categories—that the deer practicing watchfulness, living fully present, responding appropriately to environment without neurotic human overlay, achieves its own form of awakening. The turquoise background with heavy splatter suggests breakthrough moments, epiphany, when understanding suddenly crystallizes. The collision between photographic realism (deer, elephant, forest) and abstract expressionism (background) mirrors how wisdom works—concrete experience meeting abstract insight, the specific teaching the universal.Interpretation
This work contemplates different forms and sources of wisdom—solitary versus communal, instinctual versus learned, earned through survival versus inherited through culture. The stag represents the wisdom of the hermit, the loner, the one who learns by watching seasons change from the same territory, who survives by hyper-vigilance and adaptation. This is personal, hard-won knowing that cannot be taught, only experienced. The elephant represents collective wisdom, knowledge as shared resource, understanding passed through generations and maintained through social bonds. Both are majestic, both are profound, but they operate through different logics. The piece asks whether wisdom requires solitude or community, whether truth is discovered or inherited. The Buddha's presence suggests a third option—that true sagacity might transcend both, that enlightenment is neither solitary nor social but rather a state of being that can occur in any context. The medallion as weight and value suggests that wisdom has cost—it's purchased through experience, often painful, and once owned becomes burden as much as gift. Those who know cannot unknow, those who see cannot pretend blindness. The forest section represents the known world, the literal ground of experience, while the turquoise abstraction suggests the unknowable, the cosmic context that frames all earthly understanding. The painting proposes that majestic sagacity requires holding both: staying rooted in concrete reality while remaining aware of the vast mystery that surrounds it, being simultaneously practical and philosophical, grounded and reaching.Poetry
$400.00Price