Forest Rogers

Angel Painted

Fiat Lux

Angel underway:

(The ribbons behind the ears of Eastern angels always flutter, to indicate they perpetually hear the whisper of God.)

And, with thanks to Lisa S., who sent it way long ago:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

             ~ 'Wild Geese'  by Mary Oliver

Wrestling with Imps

So  where have I been?
    Battling devilkins, my friends. Long curled cozy in my psyche, they are wakened by these two years’ loss and misadventure, and by this house which proves itself a psychiatric ground zero. As  some of you know, I moved across the country last fall in the wake of my mother’s flight from this world, and now dwell in the little house where she lived.    
    The house, tiny and crouched amongst trees like a proper Baba Yaga hut, contains spectres: my maternal Granny with her red-handled fireman’s ax and tendency to devour, the beginning of a most dreadful marriage when I was 19, and most recently the melanoma that ate my mother. Combined with the sort of remorse soaked self-examination that can follow the death of someone close, it has seemed a delving in an Underworld. Far the most difficult demons to lay are the revenants of my own blunders.
    But such shadowed periods may be fruitful.  One hopes the reward for clambering out again may some kind of renaissance, and the Arts do hand one a form and venue for such, along with an obligation to seek it.
    Even bright art is stronger for wading through sorrow. Sweetness in art with no deep root through darkness can lack sustenance and resonance and remain a thing of the top soil. So perhaps we bring more revealing, higher growing fruits to the Goblin Market for time spent underground. Or, joy with more ballast.

    But alas, I have neglected much meanwhile; not least the many and many kind words from Visitors here.

    State of the Blog

    This blog was launched just a few months before my mother’s diagnosis was revealed and this strange two years plus began, with me in ‘curl up & hide’ mode much of the time.
    Thank you, most patient Visitors, for your support and words, despite my being so often MIA. It has meant and means a great deal, do not doubt! The launch of the blog was perhaps ill timed for my audience, given my frightfully sluggish responses, but it has been a great asset to me, the knowledge that you, Friends, are out there and care that I keep producing.
    Now, I aim to do better. We shall see, but I venture to bet on myself. There is much work in the pipeline: more of Faeryland, more of Baba Yaga (who will eventually have her very own page when I’ve fully set up the blog over on SquareSpace, http://ForestBeings.com, a new Mr. Faun, more folk tale  and mythic subjects. Speaking of which, I’d best return to the Table and work on them, so I can show you!

Ever my (somewhat variable) best,
Forest 
(The images are, of course, from Hieronymous Bosch,whom I adore.)

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you  must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”      ~ André Gide

With thanks to Fran, who sent it!

The Red Horseman

Kind and most Patient Friends,
    Reports of my demise have been at least modestly exaggerated.  Here’s a scan of the Sunrise Horseman from Vasilisa the Beautiful (my increasingly tattered dummy thereof) just to let you know I’m still kicking.  More anon, but for now:

8 Good Words

"I shut my eyes in order to see."
                  ~ Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1903

The Taoists have a point

Thinking in the night that there is a grace in words and in living forms, and in art that listens and music that sings, that is the same, same grace.

My New Galleries, on Squarespace

Friends,
    I'm plotting a migration to SquareSpace, a host with much, very much, to offer those of us who desire design omnipotence without CSS knowledge. My migration will be slow, very slow; this blog will stay right here for months yet, and may remain evermore as a permanent archive. Rest assured, I'll make much ado before moving.
   But for the moment, I've set up several galleries over there where it'll be much easier to find things, I believe. Let me know what you think:      

       (Click here to visit My Square Galleries, and see long lost Stuff)

My best to you, most kind and patient Guests,
Forest
(who, to paraphrase Mr. Baggins, feels like butter scraped over too much bread at the moment, but who will attain tub-of-margarine status sometime soon and become more responsive) 

My Artist Mother (post Mother's Day)

Lou Rogers, working at the Rudolph N. Rohn liturgical arts company in Pittsburgh, PA, in the early 1980's. And on the Mountain, over Boulder, CO, at 20 years old. She saw the Mountains both as entities in themselves and as populated with numinous beings, which manifested in her paintings and writings.

My Great Hobby-Novel

Friends,
    No pictures quite yet, but speaking of the macabre, I’ll taunt you with a snippet from my hobby-novel, with which I play on occasion. Being that my ‘work’ is visual, I find writing a fine flight into play. My ‘book,’ which may well never advance beyond scraps & bits, is a... what to call it: a grotesque, perhaps, concerning a deranged liturgical artist, a woman who’s lost half her face to fire, and a mighty strange sanatorium with it’s own chapel. The deranged artist, Philip Waithe, is painting murals in the chapel, which have to do with my Fiendish Plot. It’s set around 1900. 
    I toy with this dubious opus in first person; a journal for each main character. While I don’t consider myself quite as deranged, and certainly not as homicidal,  as the artist depicted, it does give a place to ‘use’ my own creative processes and curious adventures.
    From Deranged Philip’s journal, which he scratches on the scaffold in the Deranged Chapel, as he lies on a narrow scaffold board in the dome:
...

Philip Waithe, date unknown:

“I have lain seven  hours with Lazarus, and still I cannot see his face. I have caressed the winding cloth with ocher and sienna, touched the feet with a merest sliver of vermilion, yet the head where the spirit must look out remains blind.

It cannot be forced.

I look away. I shift on my narrow bed, and am held in an arc of scarlet tipped quills and gold. I  spread my arms into nothing, feel the fever bleed out, feel my breath settle, still. I say, Beloved, make me transparent. I wait, I lose thought, quiet my spirit to a flawless water.  I see.  I see reflected there the Descent into Hell.

I have drawn it on the East wall.”
...

A horrid dream image...

    More pictures anon, kind and patient Visitors! 

    For the moment, just a note on an unsettling dream -- I do love dreams in their deep strangeness, however unpleasant...
    I slept last night after brooding over various and irreparable blunders, and dreamt that I was arriving late and in the night at a hotel room in some distant city. It  was a dim and ordinary room. As I approached the bed, I saw its covers were mussed, though it appeared empty.  Then  I perceived a dreadful thing protruding from under the blanket: it was a strange naked foot on a bone-thin leg, human-seeming yet somehow wrong. It took a moment of loathsome staring to see that in place of toes, the foot possessed human fingers, long and curled, and somewhere, I think, a thumb.
    There was no place for the rest of a body in those deflated bed clothes.  

Happy Easter...

(One of a ring of twelve Angels I painted for the Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Wingspan: 14 feet, hight: 9 feet)

Baba Yaga, with bones

And in need of hair-gel and better rags:

Baba Yaga, en disahabille

Not quite dressed yet...

Baba Yaga's Jewelry

Wee Being, from the files...

At the tail end of St. Patrick's Day.

“Birds with Human Souls”

    A delightful book called Birds with Human Souls, A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Beryl Rowland, 1978) was given me by a dear friend (Cindy! You!). Amongst many a wonder, it tells of ancient Athenian coins on which “a chubby, smiling goddess with a plain helmet appeared with a well-groomed, self-confident owl.”
    It mentions the great flock of owl coins produced from the Laureotic silver mines, and quotes the most charming depiction of financial prosperity I’ve ever read:

Little Laureotic owlets
Shall be always flocking in:
You shall find them all about you,
As the dainty brood increases,
Building nests within your purses;
Hatching little silver pieces.

              ~ Aristophanes, The Birds, c. 414 BC

May many dear little owlets roost with us all during the coming year...

(Click on image to visit Okhla Bird Park preservation petition)

'What are humans without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beast also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.'

                     ~ Chief Seattle, letter to President Franklin Pierce, 1855

Protecting Okhla Bird Sanctuary, Photographer Anand Arya

Purple Sunbird (click on the image to visit the preservation Petition)

Kind Friends,
    These photographs were taken by photographer Anand Arya at the Okhla Bird Park & Wild Life Sanctuary in India. This Sanctuary, home to almost 400 species and some 25,000 plus birds at peak migration, is now threatened by adjacent construction. Anand Arya and a colleague have filed a petition with the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, New Delhi, to preserve the sanctuary. They need the support of all who care.
    This is a particularly well thought out, intelligently composed and informative petition.
    The numbers are modest so far, friends; I believe we might actually make a difference in the preservation of this place, glorious and fragile. I would urge -- nay, beg -- everyone to take a moment and sign Anand's petition at: Protect Okhla Bird Sanctuary
    Damage to a place such as this is a tragedy indeed.

Greater Flamingos (click on the image to visit Anand Arya's own website)

Vasilisa in the Dressing Room

You know how over-zealous sales ladies are apt to burst in on one in those fitting rooms...

Vasilisa getting dressed...

Vasilisa, underway...

Baba Yaga with Chin Hairs

One cannot have too many. I'll get a better shot of them later, but for the moment:
That's Vasilisa underway you see in the background. More of her soon...

Mr. Faun

(Click on the image to visit his Auction, which ends tonight!)

To You, from Baba Yaga

And in a garden:

(Click on image to visit his Auction)

A BOOK of Verse beneath the Bough,     
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou     
Beside me singing in the Wilderness...

                ~ Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Faun, more fully adorned (and now on eBay)

(Click on image to visit his Auction)

And Faun Again

(Click on image to visit his eBay Auction)

Faun, preview