The Eighth Veil

Here I am seeking to strip our naked self one level further, beyond nakedness, beyond perceived reality into the realm of the spirit to the protean energy of light that bonds us.

These images are inspired by the Dance of the Seven Veils, thought to have originated with the myth of the fertility goddess Ishtar of Assyrian and Babylonian religion.  In this myth, Ishtar decides to visit her sister, Ereshkigai, in the underworld. When Ishtar approaches the gates of the underworld, the gatekeeper lets Ishtar pass through the seven gates, opening one gate at a time.  At each gate, Ishtar has to shed an article of clothing. When she finally passes the seventh gate, she is naked.

By giving this exhibition the title “the Eighth Veil“ I was alluding to both the sensuous dance of Ishtar (and later in history, of Salome) and to the beauty of the human form, once stripped of all clothing and human attachments.

In this series, taken at night in my garden, dancer Sarah Cattrall becomes the lightening rod that transmits the protean strokes.  She is a celestial body, a force of nature.  Here the traces of comet, there a ribbon of the cosmos.