My new work has turned inward, to the world of visions and the subconscious mind, and away from the outward appearance of the everyday world. In order to come to an understanding of how and why we are, how we have and we have not changed over the millennia. Neolithic art takes meback to my very core. As I have travelled to see art from 5000 years agoin Ireland and Denmark, I have felt the powerful call of ancient symbols and their magic, how they are incorporated into the landscape and how they speak to the the elements: earth, water, stone, wind, sun, moon, sky, stars and fire.
Neolithic and Bronze Age imagery has a primordial force that penetrates beyond mundane consciousness and reaches something fundamental inthe deep, pre-historic reaches of the mind. Sometimes the message is simple: the graffiti artist with spray paint or ancient stone etcher simply want to proclaim their existence. As Beckett says so beautifully in Waiting for Godot:
‘Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give usthe impression we exist?
Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.
Giving the impression you exist is important, even magic, as Didi would have it. The real magic that art delivers is universal, it affirms our collective existence.
Affirmation of our existence and our power is what I seek as I create images of female ritualistic dancers, shaman acrobats, Neolithic sunsymbols, sun goddesses, priestesses, warrior goddesses and symbols, hags, sacred animals, earth mothers and talismans.
The surface I embed my figures in is a painterly cosmos, layered with spots, spark like marks, scratches, splotches, symbols and walls of color. I use color to connect with nature, to surprise or disorient. All this is done with the desire to effectively take the image into another plane of being.
Elisa Jensen
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