Metamorphosis – 10″ x 48″ Acrylic Painting on Canvas and under black light- Artist Susan Krieg

Paintings don’t always start out with the same intention that they end up with. Metamorphosis changed from one thing into a totally different thing.

Initially I painted a backdrop for two statues of Ganesha. The statues were situated on a slender stand one a top the other. I painted the canvas so that it was divided into three parts. The Ganeshas each sat in front of one of the doorways. The middle section just looked out into space. In the space I painted three floating MerKaBahs (star tetrahedrons with figures inside). A merkaba shows our light bodies. Everyone has a light body, a never dying soul. I painted one that represented Robert who has since passed, one represents Katja, my dog. One represents me. At some point, I moved the Ganesha statues. Then, the painting just looked like a backdrop with no subject!

The painting sat around until I moved to Barbousville in August 2024. Out in the country with lots of nature, I sat pondering the miracle of metamorphosis. How the caterpillar encases itself into a situation that it can’t get out of. Then it turns into some unknown substance! Then somehow it reconstitutes itself into a completely different form. Then it breaks out of its cell and enjoys an elevated existence before it dies!!

It was a natural subject for my mysterious doors backdrop. I painted the caterpillars emerging onto the stage of life from the lower door. They crawl up to the mystical place where they will hang as cocoons. The doorway on top is where they’ve become butterflies. I added a vesica piscis in the top section. This I’ve intended as yet another doorway into the world of souls. Lastly, I added a little yogi in the middle of it all. The yogi contemplates this miracle of life and death.

This was another painting I felt needed to be en-lightened by black light.