Description:
Watercolor on watercolor board.
Dragons in both the Asian and European traditions are rich in symbolism. During high school I generated income designing and airbrushing dragons and demons on motorcycle tanks, leathers, and sometimes drawing a custom tattoo. My boyfreind and many of the guys I knew had bikes or wanted to have them. Older brothers owned recent, more $$ models and built custom choppers that seemed in an endless state of repair, rebuild, and redesign. Drawing dragons today brings back the comfortable mood of those days standing around in shabby garages with an assortment of freinds and acquaintances shooting the breeze. I'd be sketching fantasy animals, devils and swirling, flaming designs, working on ideas while the guys worked on their bikes. The air was thick with gasoline fumes, oil, cigarettes and sometimes incense, there'd be metal or blues blasting on the tape deck. (yes, tape deck) There's nothing like working on your project surrounded by a group of like minded freinds, everybody focused on their own but exchanging ideas, joking around now and then, supporting each other and troubleshooting. I love a hard day's work and getting my hands dirty.
This is a classic mythical image; the sleeping princess and dragons guarding her chamber. Maybe the reason its so popular is we all enter a state of stasis now and then. Sometimes life can become mundane, crammed with years of obligations, responsibilities, and endless distractions. It seems as if we are walking in a dream or treading water because what we think we really want is always just out of reach. Having to work a regular job or two, caretaking, heatlh and relationships seem to be permanant roadblocks. But all of this IS life. Our life. Looking ahead to what might be at some imagined point in the future, or brooding over something that happened in the past means not living in the Now, not experiencing what's going on as it occurs. We are no longer fully conscious. Somnambulant, we are unaware of the power, the fire which is ours. Awakening from this ever shifting dream is the first step toward accessing Nwyvre, the Dragonfire, within.
This image is the beautiful soul within us ( I always represent the soul as feminine). She's ageless, unblemished, trusting, and totally secure. The dragons represent strength, wisdom, bravery. The fire is Nwyvre. We all have it, using different words and stories to describe it.
text and image copyright Helena Nelson Reed. Please don't use without written permission.
