from the Diary of a Tree Standing On Its Head










Began in 2021, this painting is about the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, found in the Old Testament of the Bible, particularly the events of chapters 3 and 4 of his book. A limited number of archival reproductions of this painting are available at Baumwerkshop

John Moriarty describes a dream in which he hears a knock on his door late at night. He opens the door to the incarnation of the constellation of Orion. Orion as a representative of the whole Universe has come to deliver a message to John (as a representative of humanity?), concerning the accumulation of everything which humanity has believed about the Universe, well, the Universe doesn’t recognize themself in any of it.
This drawing is part of The Diary of a Tree Standing on it’s Head series I’ve been working on.

I also decided to make some prints of this one. They are for sale here at Baumwerkshop.com

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the recurring image of the Lion/Dog-Chimera/Beast standing guard over the prone man in my work from the past 2 1/2 decades. The Beast Himself shows up in many other works, but today I am concerned with His appearance specifically over this lying-down (dead?)man; an obscured self-portrait echo of Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ.
When I first started making these images, I was very uncertain of the beast. Is he good or evil? Is he standing guard to protect the man from being devoured or to devour him himself? As time has gone on plenty of uncertainty remains, yet I feel that the beast transcends the duality of good and evil- I could even venture that he transcends it as goodness.
Pushing a bit harder, I might say the beast is the Angel of the Holy Spirit- if that’s too far, I can retreat to the ground that he is “messenger”.
Entering into the imaginal space of these images, the land of spiritual vision, allows their merger with memory and experience. That’s a leap into what some call the realm of the unseen. As for me, I say it is a seen realm, but with other eyes. They are my memories and experiences.
The man, is he alive or dead or both. He begins to be folded into the Earth in later drawings. And fully inhabits the worship life cycle of growth and decay by the last image. The relationships have matured a little bit perhaps? Time will tell.





