Cedar Lee March 25th, 2008

This week I found out that my belly dance teacher is moving to Taiwan because her husband is being transferred there for work. I’ve had so much fun in her class these past several months, and I’m sad that it’s coming to an end.

In her honor, I’ve made this small painting of a beautiful dancer in costume.

Belly Dancer
Acrylic on Canvas
10″ x 8″

This painting is going to my teacher, but if you’d like me to paint a belly dancer for you, talk to me.

What I have enjoyed the most about my belly dancing class is hanging out with other women of all ages and shapes in a non-judgmental setting where we can have fun, laugh together, and celebrate our shared experience as women. Belly dance is a celebration of femininity, physical and spiritual. This may sound corny, especially to men (I don’t know what the male equivalent would be–sports? hunting? roughhousing?) but I think that the celebration of what we are is important–everyone is born into their own body and their own life. There is no way around it, so we might as well embrace it and rejoice in it.

So often (especially in our culture, I think) women are tormented by insecurity, questioning their own beauty and self-worth, trying to live up to some unattainable and vaguely defined standard. Insecurity can make women bitter, jealous and petty. It can make them spend all their money on clothes, hairstyles, cosmetics and plastic surgery. This is such a waste of our energy, when all the beauty that we need is already right there inside us, if we would just recognize it.

That’s what these next two paintings are about. They both started out as sketches for self-portraits (it’s been awhile since I’ve done one) but as I painted them, they became less and less an accurate physical likeness, but at the same time I felt they were representing me more and more. Finally I realized that it wasn’t myself I was painting, and it wasn’t any other real-life woman either.

I was painting goddesses–I don’t mean goddess in the literal sense, as a deity, but rather, the goddess that’s in every woman–the feminine spirit–that dichotomy of gentle beauty and fierce strength within the same person. Cliché? Maybe. A little corny? Maybe–but it’s rooted in truth, and this thought process has inspired some pretty successful artwork:

Ruby Goddess
16″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas

Lavender Goddess
20″ x 24″ Oil on Canvas

I got my artichoke seeds in the mail today (which had been on backorder.) I am so antsy to get out there and plant my garden, but I have to wait another couple of weeks, until the danger of frost is past.

• Life , New Works: Nature & Misc.
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