Medium: Watercolor on paper

Date : 2025

Solar Crown

This week’s piece emerged from a quiet space within me—one where symbols speak more fluently than words, and the boundaries between elements blur into something new. I call it “Solar Crown.”

Allow me to root it in a moment that deeply informed it. This reflection pertains to Jill Devlin’s farm near the Delaware Water Gap. Last week, I found myself meditating on the large pond at the center of the land; this week, my thoughts extended outward, across more aspects of the 120-acre sanctuary. Life shimmered there in subtle forms: Canadian geese gliding across still waters, white cranes lifting off in silence. One spring day, I set down my clothing and played Bach’s cello suites beside the pond for hours, seated in the grass, surrounded by an invisible audience of birds and breeze. Jill, with quiet kindness, brought me a glass of red wine as a reward for simply being. There were large cats—of every color—and I recall one, normally aloof, curling into Jill’s lap by firelight. Later, I watched her gently extract a large moth from the cat’s forehead, as if performing a rite. Afterward, that cat never left her side. The pond itself was a universe—home to flashing fish, biting turtles, and a vitality that shimmered just beneath the surface. This land, once William Penn’s, Jill eventually bequeathed to New Jersey, to be transformed into a state park. But to me, it remains an emblem of wild grace and quiet mystery. It lives in Solar Crown.

At the center stands a lion, golden and grounded, with flames for a mane. It came to me not as a beast of violence, but as an emblem of clarity—of conscious strength, of inner fire that does not need to roar to be known. I didn’t place it atop a mountain or in a field, but in a space suspended between two opposing yet harmonious entities: a white, spirit-like figure above, and a cool blue, oceanic creature below.

Symbolic Elements and Visual Design

Each figure in this composition plays a role in a triadic balance. The white form above—part bird, part celestial guardian—embodies the mental and spiritual realm. It watches, it hovers, it doesn’t interfere. It holds the lion’s mane.  The lion, the central force, stands between the ethereal and the emotional. Its feet rest on the blue creature below, anchoring it in both realms.

And that blue being—marked with a sun, despite being aquatic—symbolizes emotional depth, intuition, the waters of the unconscious.  I often find that the brightest insights come not from logic, but from the currents beneath the surface.

Techniques

I leaned into a minimal line style here—almost like stained glass. I wanted to give each form clarity, but also softness. Watercolor offered the perfect voice for that: it bleeds and blends, just like the ideas behind this piece. The palette is elemental: yellow for fire and life, white for the unseen, blue for intuition, and hints of red-orange to stir it all together.

Emotional Impact

There’s stillness here. Not inaction, but presence. The lion isn’t moving forward—it’s already arrived. And what I felt, while painting, was that quiet pride that comes from being fully yourself, standing in the middle of your own duality, held by the things that once pulled you apart.

Life Lesson

This piece reminds me that strength isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about standing in your truth, even when it’s born of contradiction. The lion is powerful because it draws from both sky and sea. We, too, find our truest power when we learn to hold both our light and our shadow with compassion.

“It is in the balance of contradictions that the soul reveals its true shape.”