The scene I seem to paint over and over in all sizes and mediums Acrylic on board 30″ x 20″ Copyright Mary Lee Mattison 2018
Phoenix in Flight Acrylic on board 30″ x 20″ Copyright Mary Lee Mattison 2014
From within the black void, my radiant consciousness stirs. This flutter kindles a smoldering ember, fragile as the wisp of smoke that gently undulates around me. For I am the Ember! Flames erupt and transform me from glowing, white-coated ash to deep crimson to scarlet to yellow to blinding light that pushes back the darkness. I am now crackling flames dancing wildly beneath the night sky. Scorching heat forces me up and up and up but I cannot escape the inferno. I am the Inferno! My incandescent wings unfold into a molten crescent against the luminous, eastern sky. I suddenly burst above the horizon, my aura a blossoming flower of fire! Yes! I am Reborn. I am Rebirth. I am new life pulsing with potential promise. I am the Sunbird. I am the Phoenix! A little dramatic I admit, but I this is resurrection, baby. Immortality is pretty big stuff! I am associated with the rising sun because I symbolize a new beginning. A new day. A new chance for life, wealth, and fertility*. I am life after hope has died. I am the spark of creation rising from nothing but a bunch of aromatic ashes and singed feathers left over from my own funeral pyre (Which I had to build when I felt my death approaching, then light myself.)
I have other avian incarnations. As the Chinese Feng-Huang, personification of the primordial force of the heavens, I have the head and the comb of a pheasant and the tail of a peacock. The usually imaginative Egyptians saw me as a … wait for it … hoe-hum heron. We’re big on embalming so their myths had me taking a moment to embalm my own remains in an egg of myrrh and then toting it up to Heliopolis (‘city of the sun’) to splat upon the alter of the Sun god Re. I don’t have patience for that today. My myth insists that there can be just one of me at a time and so I have only this ONE long day (which is either 500 or 1461 years depending on who you ask) to ignite your creative passions with my dazzling display and fortuitous, feathers of flame. *Fertility was big back in the old times, but not so much today.Pop Corn Sutton Acrylic on Board 30″ x 20″ Copyright Marylee Mattison 2014
Golden Brick Wall in Empty Old Mill Lowell MA Acrylic on Board 20 ” x 30″ Copyright Mary Lee Mattison 2014
AbandonedMill Factory Lowell MA Acrylic on Board 30″ x 20″ Copyright Marylee Mattison 2013
