One of the things I love about art is the relationship with the unknown. Through improvisation, artist journals and reiteration, symbols arise and evolve. I get to witness it happening, and though this process, I am also healed and given messages.
One of the archetypes in my work is Rabbit Woman. She has a funny beginning, in a floor tile. It’s so fun to find recognizable faces or shapes in random splotches.
This particular splotch was like a odd little man with rabbit ears, a bit angry or uptight. I grabbed my sketchbook and drew him with charcoal while sitting on the toilet seat. In Rabbit Man, I take the image a bit further using watercolor and tissue paper.
I played with this image again in Rabbit Queen, which is actually a self portrait. I love how the colors and texture turned out in this piece.
It took a while for Rabbit to settle down. My mother called me “bunny” when I little (actually she still does, shhh), and it’s funny to look at these early images and see how they are rebellious, with something to prove. I am NOT a bunny. Like a teenager.
But soon the tender vulnerability of Rabbit Woman started to emerge, the child hiding, often interacting with other archetypes. In Rabbit’s Journey, Rabbit is led along by Horse Women, in some sort of initiation, one that is not quite wanted.
In Rabbit Looks at Death, Horse Woman is a skeleton, and Rabbit Woman (more like a child), regards her, inert and powerless.
I used part of this image in Going West, a digital drawing about moving from New York to California in the summer of 1976 in an old orange station wagon my mother named Ethel.
A moment of emotion came while working in the artist journal I was creating as part of my masters research. In this quick drawing, Rabbit Woman has succeeding in coaxing a large bird of prey to land on her gloved arm. Horse Woman and another archetype, Stag Woman, watch on in parental pride. Creating this image was unexpectedly emotional. I felt seen, accepted. The arts are powerful.
Most recently, I’ve been playing with Rabbit Woman in many different ways, such as in the form of a strange doll in a surreal space, dressing her up in fancy socks, being playful with colors and forms, or as more wild looking hare, running with others.
Thank for reading the story of Rabbit Woman.