I have a wonderful strong wife and I see her like a warrior. She has been a part of my life for 55 years. This painting is more or less for her. If the feminine energy of the world was in control, this is what it would be like.
She is mounted on a huge black animal, that is the power that she controls. Without strength. The power that she has to control her space is soft energy, not hard energy. The sword that she has by her side is a butterfly sword which means that she protects the weakest of everything that she has control over. A butterfly can live one day- why bother? But that is her purpose. If you can protect the weakest of all things that means that you can protect everything else. So this is my sense of what I try to portray. It’s an energy. It’s powerful, feminine energy, undiluted.
As human beings evolved and came more forward, the mixture of masculine and feminine energy has made it very difficult to see clearly what the world would be like if you had just the one element, the one energy to control. Feminine energy is purity, is beauty, balance and this sense of harmony. The deities, the archetypal deities that were feminine, this is what they brought to our planet. And that is what I was trying to portray.
The reason why I wanted to show it to you up close is because my sense of some of these big paintings can be, let’s say, more intimate. To walk by the painting, to be able to stroke the back of the black animal, as powerful as it is, is a wonderful feeling. For me this is the ultimate pleasure.
I have spent my life painting paintings because of the intricate detail, wanting them to be bigger but always compromising on the size because the large painting takes months to paint. The small painting, I can do in a month if I’m lucky.
Here is an opportunity – because when you look at the small paintings, you’re always coming in because you need to get close to see the details and to feel the atmosphere. The ultimate contradiction which I love- here is a very large image in a small space, so I can actually look and touch all the details and enjoy being literally in the image.
-Michael Parkes