Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I’ve put down the extruded acrylic (ie. syringe painted) layer in this new painting, trying another piece in the same style as the St. Sebastian painting that I just posted. This one is titled The Tower, after the eponymous Tarot card representing chaos, change, or downfall… The flaky among you may have recognized it ;) haha. In part the Tower is the ego, and is struck down by lightening when ego and reality no longer line up, and life changes drastically — perhaps catastrophically. It comes with an awakening and realization of the truth, although this is often an unpleasant experience. In the deck, as the 16th Major Arcana card, it comes after, both literally and philosophically, The Devil (materialism, obsession, vice, and most importantly self-bondage that keeps one sick — so not “Satan” literally) and before The Star (love, tranquility, hope — First Corinthians chapter 13 in a card I suppose), joining them and bridging between them. So as much as there are all the negative aspects of chaos, out of that chaos there is the potential for something much better to be born (borne?).

So now that the canvas is “initialized”, I’ll start painting it later in the week.

I had a bit of an unpleasant night, waking in its middle in great pain. As I lay there I considered that I might have forgotten to take my evening painkillers, because it’s unusual for the pain to be severe enough for it to wake me and keep me up (I sleep surprisingly well these days, all things considered). Unfortunately I did remember it and no relief was to be found. Anyway, this past weekend Caitlin and I were at IKEA and I picked up some sheepskins, so this afternoon I’m going to try and finalize a pattern as I’m using those skins to make a stuffed snow monster. It’ll be my first attempt at doing anything in three dimensions using fabric so there’s a bit of a learning curve. I made some nice eyes and nose and mouth bits though– these are made out of cast plastic resin and painted with acrylics and nail polish.