January / New Year / Capricorn
"January" is a reinterpretation of the traditional American holiday personifications of Baby New Year and Father Time, but with the addition of Mother Nature. Through his Magic-realism imagery, Smarkusz places an emphasis on matriarchy by depicting Time as a mysteriously wise old woman. This Mother Time also represents Death, but as a more human and compassionate embodiment of the Grim Reaper. Both of these maternal entities are eternal, with one representing the deep mystery of the Cosmos, while the other embodies the sensual beauty of Nature. They are the lord Goddesses which "giveth and taketh away" through birth and death. Much of Vincent's work pays homage to women and children, matriarchy, and the feminine qualities of nature and spirit.
The month of January recieved its name from Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome who succeeded Romulus. He is said to have created and named the month after Janus, the dual faced Roman God of gates and doors. The word January comes from the Latin "ianua" for door. Janus is also the God of beginnings and endings, and looks both to the future and the past simultaneously. The details contained in this composition include other temporal and dualistic meanings related to birth and death, and nature and spirit, as well as to the flow of time.
There is always variability to each viewer's eye movements within the frame of a painting, but Smarkusz uses structure to direct the eye, while he shapes the meaning of a scene. This composition as a whole is quite simple. We enter the scene in the face of Death. The handle of her Scythe directs us to the elder Cherub brandishing his Golden Horn to herald the coming of a new generation of Life. The old and young are as past and future exchanging glances in the present moment.
The composition then guides our gaze clockwise, around the loins of Mother Nature being suspended by two younger Cherubs, representing her as the source of life. Continuing clockwise into a backward sweeping wave, over her breasts and face, between the Reapers blade and flying Bird-of-Paradise, we exit the scene upper left. The symbolized sweep of time thus strongly established, we are then free to reenter the frame to explore its many details and meanings at our own pace.
This overall rising, then circular clockwise motion, sweeping back and out of the frame, represents the passage of time as it lingers briefly in the present moment. Looking upon the serenely sleeping face of Mother Nature, and swept along by the scythe of death, we also see hope in the end. Our ephemeral Earthly paradise is represented by a delicate and beautiful bird, which also represents travel to the afterlife - to an even more beautiful paradise in Heaven. Smarkusz uses birds to symbolize the passage of time, and he equates them with human spirituality, and with sensual nature.
We experience the separation and tension between the old Grim Reaper's face which is falling from the frame at bottom left, and the floating group of youthful lives projected up and forward by the trumpeting boy at the center of the scene. We perceive these subjects as opposing yet complimentary forces, acknowledging each other in the passage of time. Looking into the eyes of Death, we see her looking back at the heralding youth, who in turn looks back at her, acknowledging yet defying her looming presence. All three youths are supporting Life and transporting her into the future, away from death.
The compositon includes three interelated layers of flow, symbolizing temporal complexity and conceptual depth. Both the foreground Reaper, and the background Bird of Paradis are moving left and into the past. Between them in the middle ground, Mother Nature and her progeny of youth are floating right and into the future. And although the Bird accompanies death into the past, it portends a future and/or eternal-present life on an implied fourth level where Life and Death are one. Natural life denies death for a while, and Spiritual life conquers Death in the end. As Life moves in opposition to the entropy of Time, it is being forever reborn in both nature and spirit.
For Smarkusz, each and every object has significance. The Bird of Paradise is associated with the earth mother, giving her wings of beauty like a natural angel, representing the spirit of life in an earthly paradise. The arch of its wings and their proximity to the reaper's scythe expresses a contrast between the delicateness of temporary life and the sharpness of permanent death. Fortunately they reside on different planes within the frame and are thus in separate realms from each other. Beautiful and precious life is free to fly once more, until it will be cut down by Time as Death.
The silver sickle (pointing left into the past) portends the destruction of life when it is harvested and reduced to its constituent parts, as is symbolized by the metaphysical numbers and shapes imprinted on the Reaper's hood. This is an inescapable truth of the profound cosmic mystery.
And yet the Bird of Paradise .......
The golden horn (pointing right into the future) symbolizes birth, and heralds the coming of a new age with harmony of all parts to the whole. The offspring of Mother Nature encircle her loins in anticipation of new life issuing forth from the source of creation. In the present at least, the most prescious Gold (horn) trumps the silver (sickle), as life moves past death and into future, away from destruction and towards creation.
The zodiac symbol for January is Capricorn the Sea-goat - a hybrid creature symbolizing the ability to swim deeply and travel far. In association with the idea of birth in this scene, the Capricorn creature suggests transition - from the interior oceanic realm of a spiritual womb, to the exterior terrestrial world of nature. In this way Smarkusz represents another axis of dimensionality, perpendicular to the horizontal axis of time. The inner and outer dimensions of spirit and nature, thus become unified with temporality within the eternal present.
Look deeply and see far, the depth and breadth of mystery.
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