January 15, 2004
Coyote
The Art of
Suzanne Deveuve
Over the past twenty years, my art and my life have developed along parallel paths. The issues and questions that first moved me to create art have deepened and become more subtle. For example, when I began my career I was very much aware that, as a woman, I must express my vision, since it was my strong feeling that women's voices and expressions would help balance our society that seemed so precariously out of balance in so many ways. I felt that art with its power of the subliminal suggestion could penetrate the barriers of the closed mind of a culture destroying itself. Also, I read the complete diaries of Anais Nin and believed as she did that women must create from the womb of life and not by cutting themselves off from it.
Flights of
Fantasy
At this same time I traveled through the Southwest, got married and had my first child, in Taos, New Mexico. In the highly sensitive and receptive state of a pregnant women, in a beautiful and powerful landscape, I became very involved with the native culture and mythology around me. I felt strongly that the indigenous cultures did hold an answer for the out of balance dominant culture. And however small my voice might be, the imagery would create a ring of subtle influence that would eventually spread as the hundredth monkey concept, to enlighten ourselves.
The dress and rituals spoke
to me, as well as the petroglyphs and shamanic
practices, like sweat lodges and drumming journeys
to receive a power animal. Thus my paintings
reflected these ideas and images. Jungle
Transformation
Alongside of my deep instinctual connections to the natural world and animals, was a spiritual yearning for discovery of the "self" as described by Carl Jung in his book Memories Dreams and Reflections. And by a natural progression, a yearning for a spiritual identity with a God or Goddess. Thus the study of world mythologies through the works of Joseph Campbell and others led me to the rich visual soup and endless creative matrix of mythology from all ages and areas of the world, not to mention my own personal mythology.
The study of Carl Jung's Vision of the "self" led me to my many Harlequin images. The harlequin is a symbol of being open to the multitude of life's lessons, expressed through various personas as in the Four Horse women, or sexuality as in Coyote and Harlequin. All these experiences were learning about and deepening the connection to the inner and ever elusive "self" . And allowing one to actually stand back from the experience a little and see the wonder of the process.
My image, Grandmother of time, depicts the Crone aspect of the triple goddess, from the European goddess traditions; she represents the older wise women, which in our dominant culture is virtually non existent. It is my hope that images such as these will cut a space into our collective psyche, so that this wise older women will reemerge in a powerful and loving way to help us all heal.
Currently I am a single mother, and I am discovering a whole new challenge in this role as well as in being a single woman. My current work is reflecting some of the struggles and resolutions of these ever widening and deepening life experiences.
Shakti Woman
To see more works of Suzanne Deveuve's, and to order prints and cards, please
visit her web site.