“Seven More Years” (art work) for the book “Owl Meets Cat”
Work title: “Seven More Years”
Description: This is commissioned art work by Marco Verdugo (Jervis Bay). The music album “Owl Meets Cat” is a musical and visual storyline. It comes with a book narration which includes this art commission. My artwork entitled “Seven More Years” comes with my written take on the song.
Contact the artist for a Book Illustration Project
Artist’s Reflections: Copyright Nic Anderson Art 2020.
This song, “Seven More Years”, narrates the lost, despondent, even desperate journey of a young girl through seven cycles of physical maturity – at age 17, 24, and 31, going through the abyss of substance abuse/ addiction, and consequent rehabilitation. Ending in disillusionment about the wonder and purpose of life.
Ironically, it is a painful and undirected life story — which is not A-typical. This is not a unique story.
Depression, anxiety, and mental health are a global epidemic today – not only in young adults; this issue straddles children, parents, teenagers, to the elderly – across the board.
Having grown up in a domestic violence household, and being a mystical seeker most of my life, this dilemma grabs at me on two levels:
If the global outcomes we are currently living in are a technical consequence of our intentions and actions —
- What does this typical story reflect of our real core values as a society? Not the values we think or say, but the real ones we live out daily
- What do we really value as a society to be delivering human beings to the world in this way? Does physical maturity translate to psychological maturity, translate to psycho-spiritual maturity. What support are we given/ do we provide? How much of this do we leave to chance?
There are many ways for this typical experience to end.
Granted, living on this planet is most likely not as clear cut as being about happy or sad endings.
Soul contracts between people we meet in this life carry out their purpose in irrational ways more often than not, with lessons we learn about ourselves in the process.
Nonetheless, conscious choice does put forward the truth that we can make choices that carve out our destiny both on an individual and collective level.
Contact the artist for a Book Illustration Project
THE COSMIC CHILD
Phase 1 – The Cosmic Child
The wonderment of the child, so strongly soul-infused, coming through with strength of will, the capacity to dream, unbound by social conditioning, disorientated and without fear or conditioned limits on what’s possible.
**The paradox of this phase is the vibrancy of one’s self as a cosmic being, incarnated into a human body (as a child) vis-a-vis the limited cognitive ability characteristic of this phase — which refers to the ability to understand or make sense of one’s self in relation to this world; as well as the capacity to be able to process trauma big or small.
* What world is the child coming into?
* What are the cultural values?
* How does the world see the child?
* How does the world value optimising true human potential?
* How does the child learn to survive and exist in this world?
* Does the child have permission to be it’s authentic self?
UNSUSTAINABLE ADDICTION
Phase 2 – Unsustainable Addiction
In a predominant shame-based society, that is critical, perfectionist, and judgemental, the child gets the message that being it’s authentic self, full of unrestrained light, is a risk to it’s survival.
It needs to come up with subconscious survival coping mechanisms to be able to survive.
Substance abuse is only one of many forms of addiction. There is addiction to information, to sex, to external validation, to control, to social media, to food, etc.
All manifestations of these adaptive strategies.
Addictions are the result of the divine child’s cognitive immaturity, navigating through survival.
These are adaptive behaviours the subconscious mind enrols, to cope with the fear of death, and low self-worth.
Being based on false premises, these dysfunctional patterns that kept us alive for years, start to become UNSUSTAINABLE.
CHAOS AND THE DARK CYCLE
Phase 2 – Chaos and the dark cycle
As these unsustainable patterns start to break down in our life, our false identity I.e. how we have packaged ourselves to exist in this world, and how we have structured our world via these adaptive patterns, start to de-construct.
Which translates to chaos, uncertainty, and the death to one’s known (false) identity.
Contact the artist for a Book Illustration Project
**New authentic potential is seeking to come through, and the mystical soul is calling out for one’s fuller potential to come forth.
Letting go of control, and surrendering to this death within one’s self, can be maddening.
It can be overwhelming.
Old patterns and old identity may be too entrenched to give up – if the mind believes that deconstructing them means death to one’s existence.
Death – in relationships, and even physical death or acute illness, can characterise this phase.
DEATH AND REBIRTH
Phase 3 – Death and rebirth
Our ego-driven shame-based society, have us believing that happiness is the goal, that life is meant to be a consistent straight line of perfection and happiness.
And any illness, anger, depression, or dark emotion – is a sign of failure, or “something being wrong with me”.
This obsession with certainty — a flat-consistent-line of perfection — manifests in the compulsion and/or social pressure to choose happy thoughts (and repress less positive emotions) regardless of whether they are authentic or not.
More uncomfortable albeit authentic darker emotions of frustration or even anger, are shamed.
This approach is not real (authentic); and does not honour the cycle of death, and rebirth.
It is society’s way of mentally collapsing us into doubting the intelligence behind our emotions —-emotions are truth tellers.
Malicious anger or rage, is very different to Sacred anger or rage. And yet society shames ALL dark emotions into the bad basket.
Society has us trained to doubt our own gut instincts, instead of trusting our intuition and gut call, for the sake of appeasing external judgement or external validation.
Sacrifice your integrity; just don’t be the odd one out.
We are only mentally collapsible if we buy the false story about our low self-worth – I.e. how we are damned and broken to begin with at birth.
No bigger lie has been spoken.
Our soul esteem is full and remains untarnished and calling out to our potential at every junction.
Modern society has us trained to be uncomfortable about fear, darkness, and uncertainty.
The Greeks, and ancient society, on the other hand – recognised darkness as part of the cycle of light.
Without darkness, there can be no light.
The Greeks even had a God called Chaos to honour and respect this uncomfortable yet essential part to life’s cycle.
*** This artwork honours the eternal light and wisdom (symbolised by the Owl 🦉 spirit animal) of our Soul Esteem, and calls out to the viewer to have courage and faith (symbolised by the Wolf 🐺 Mother and Offspring), in the darkest of times.
The wisdom and courage to see one’s authentic self, the cosmic child bearing life’s wonderment, mystery, and purpose.
You are not alone. You are supported. Take the next step. Have faith. And emerge into the light of your full potential.
You are here for a reason. And the world needs you.
Copyright Nic Anderson Art 2020.
Contact the artist for a Book Illustration Project
Recent Comments