Throughout my work and in several different styles, I keep returning to imagery of a diver as a metaphor for subconscious exploration, as crossing the threshold between varying levels of consciousness. The paintings are inspired by The Tomb of the Diver, located in the Ancient Greek city of Paestum in Campania, Italy, which is a unique and mysterious tomb that depicts on its ceiling a fresco of a diver leaping into a pool of water. The diver depicted has puzzled historians since no other Ancient Greek tomb has been found with similar figurative imagery, thought the concept of diving was often utilized in poetry and scenes of passionate loss from the time. The fresco gives connotations that death is a leap into unknown mysterious waters; a passage to the “otherworld”. At times, moving between the states of waking life/reality, meditation, dreams, and intuitive knowing can feel like walking through different worlds. I like that here, the diver is depicted in an in-between state, not yet breaking the surface of the water, but in motion towards an inevitable change of state and being.

Watercolor on paper, 14” x 11”, 2022

Currently framed with a white mat surrounding the painting and a thin contemporary light maple wood frame. The total size with frame measures 16" x 20".