:: 2023 :: 40cm x 50cm :: Acrylics, Inks and Markers on Canvas ::
At Delphi, the Pythoness chanted oracles. Something similar seems to have happened at the Classic Maya city of Yaxchilan: the oracle would encounter a serpent in his or her dreams, and from its mouth hear a prophecy, or be taken into another world. The inscriptions tell us this was called ochk’an ‘entering the sky’
Sometimes, when you give yourself permission to completely stop, that’s exactly when the inspiration and enthusiasm starts to flow again. In my case, it took only a few days from my loud announcement of an art sabbatical, for this small artwork to come calling to me.
It’s a visionary moment from my one and only ayahuasca journey, many years ago, and it’s a moment that for various reasons I chose not to speak about at the time – even when directly asked about whether I had seen serpents – or for years afterwards. Except to tell my husband, and to quietly draw it in one of my sketchbooks a few days afterwards.
Beyond that, I kept silent, and let the image warmly sit within me for eight years, doing whatever work it needed to do. Last year, I looked through this sketchbook again, remembered it with a smile, and realised that now was the time to evoke the night I whistled up a serpent and entered the sky.
'Ochk'an ~ Enter The Sky' sketches 2014 and 2018
