35x45cm oil on canvas.
Worked on this for quite some time not getting a handle on it to be honest so decided to stop painting at this stage.. That text on the book was punishing to paint.
This piece is based on the theme of ‘Go Wild’. I saw a painting by Conor Walton in which St. Patrick arrived to civilise the wild Irish Savage. Today, Modern Man in Search of a Soul(Jung) seeks out the old religions and their practices in his quest for a spirituality he has not found in the, now tyrranical, new religions. There is some evidence that suggests the origins of Christianity lay in mushroom cults of the Middle East. The Amanita Muscaria reminds us of the ‘Soma’ of the Vedic texts. Mature Muscaria fruit curls its cap upwards resembling a Holy Grail. Dried muscaria tastes like cardboard much like a church wafer. Muscaria were dried on fir and pine trees (some of the host trees for the mycellium) which could be where our Christmas bauble tradition comes from.
Could be a bit of a reach…..or completely true!