What music is she dancing to?

Swan Dance, Acrylic and collage on canvas,  24 X 18″

I started this painting several weeks ago and it “stared” at me unfinished and full of reproach.  The initial impulse behind it was gone and I couldn’t find my way back into it.

Then I was reading a book I picked up in the library, When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm by Layne Redmond.  It’s the history of the women playing the hand drum in spiritual, tribal ceremonies dating back to ancient times. In my reading I kept finding many of the same images that been arising spontaneously in my paintings – images like the tree of life  and fertility symbols that I didn’t know were so ancient and universal.

This modern woman in the painting with her colorful leotard (invented in my overactive imagination) became associated with those ancient women playing the hand drum thousands of years ago to summon the powers of the universe.  After I finished the painting I could clearly see that in her left hand, which is outside the picture plane, she holds a hand drum with feathers or tamborine cymbols attached, as she captures the movement of the cosmos in her dance.