The World from the Tarot Series

2021
(Study for painting)
Graphite pencil, ink, and Prismacolor
pencil on Strathmore Paper
12×9 inches

The tarot card “The World” represents fulfillment, achievement and completion. It shows a victorious figure stepping through a laurel into deserved acclaim. As an artist, I am impressed with its additional meaning of birthing an idea in art, and completing the strenuous task of realizing and communicating this creation.

Overlying the drawing image is the poem “Kubla Khan, Or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poem is ostensibly about the creation of the pleasure dome Xanadu but can also be read as an extended metaphor or allegory about the powers of human creativity. It explores the theme of man in parallel with nature. The poem here is written as a calligram, text arranged in such a way that it forms a thematically related image. The form is the sacred spiral, representing the cycle of rebirth and connection to the cosmos.