Artist's Statement:

I have always loved birds, butterflies, and dragonflies.

To me, these winged creatures represent an ability to transcend the mundane and access a higher state of being. They symbolize freedom. Butterflies especially, show us the miracle of transformation and remind us that life has many stages.

The history of many cultures, including the ancient Greeks, preserved a specific mythology regarding the transformation of physical death. These beliefs maintained that after a person died, their soul fluttered away from the body in the form of a bird or a butterfly. The Greek word for 'soul' is 'psyche'. The word was used to describe the breath, as a sign of life, or of spirit. The psyche is what escaped the body after a person died.

I tried to create an image that would symbolize the idea of the human experience being an experience of the soul expressing itself through the physical - the divine and eternal, animated through nature. What is the magic that makes a flower grow, the planets turn, or a baby cry? Where does this invisible spark of life come from? Surely, it comes from a place that cannot be described, but it expresses itself by donning the mask and gown of the physical world. The flesh and all of the physical senses are only footprints left by a greater mystery.

example - (frame not included)

The Artist, Ragen Mendenhall