After more than one attempt to harness this dragon, I have finally managed to mint my latest artwork as a non-fungible token on the HIVE blockchain. Perhaps the current Mercury retrograde was synchronous with my struggle. Or maybe the dragon was harder to harness than I expected, but it was certainly worth the effort. Check it out for sale here: https://nftshowroom.com/julianhorack/gallery/julianhorack_collages-julescape-q3-2021_harness-your-dragon.
Actually it was my weak WiFi connection initially that wouldn’t co-operate. But today – for a few hours only – I have a better internet connection and so my dragon artwork is minted and an NFT is born.
This is another in my personal style of handmade paper collage which is then scanned and uploaded to mint as an NFT onto the blockchain. Hive is where you will find 95% of my original artworks. I have two on the Polygon/Matic blockchain at OpenSea NFT gallery, for what it’s worth.
Today’s art piece is called “Harness Your Dragon” and consists of pictures that I find in old magazines, cut out with scissors and pasted onto a surface using glue. It’s my old school recycling style of collage making, which is then revolutionized or modernized by being minted as an NFT.
This is a combination of old and new. Most of the cut out pictures are from 20 year old magazines or older, so come from a distant past. You could call it a remix. Old wine in new bottles, as the saying goes, only totally remixed. The theme is my usual surrealist or dreamscape imagery, along the lines of Salvador Dali and other such fine artists. I love the sci-fi and fantasy genre, with its mythic tales and legends, as well as the cosmic themes, all of which you will see in today’s NFT.
The landscape in the image is a remote barren wasteland, or swamp if you wish. And from it several dragons emerge, looking fierce and dangerous. Yet at the same time they are being ridden by dragon riders with great ease. The riders appear to be female. On the other hand, a group of strong males is attempting to harness another dragon, which is not going as easily compared to those ridden by the females.
Such is life, you might say. Do males have a harder time mastering this skill, whatever it is...this harnessing of the dragon? It has been a mediation of mine for decades and could allude to the channelling of the feminine “kundalini shakti”, known to all yogis. This kundalini force is described in ancient Sanskrit yoga texts as a serpent power coiled up at the base of the spine.
Once the yogi has spent time meditating and making the right effort, they can awaken this shakti and harness it so that it rises up the spine to the third eye chakra between the eyebrows, perhaps associated with the pituitary gland in the brain. This leads to enlightenment with all its benefits, like clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. Most of all, it allows one to meet god face to face, as the yoga masters describe.
In the image here today, I have depicted a run down old building in the center of the scene, inhabited by numerous Asian folks, including the conjoined siamese twins from many decades ago. However, in this image, they are now split up into two individuals, watching the proceedings along with the other Asian bystanders. You may recognise them from old photos.
Added to that are the twin dragons rising up from behind the old building, an echo of the twin theme. Yoga doctrine talks of two channels rising up the central spinal channel, like we see in the two serpents coiled around the Caduceus or staff of the mythic god Mercury, the winged messenger. In old Medieval alchemy you will find the symbol of the conjoined twin male and female characters, symbolising the union of sun and moon or male and female within oneself. It is said to be the goal of the alchemist or mystic seeker.
To me these are all alluding to the same goal of union of opposites, which is the goal of psychological wholeness. So the harnessing of the dragon, and the union of both hemispheres of our brain – male and female – right and left, yin and yang, are to me symbols of self-realization and wholeness, which I aim to portray in today’s artwork.
Although the landscape appears very bleak and the building forlorn, inside the windows we can see bright pink and purple backgrounds which I used to juxtapose against the otherwise monochrome backdrop. This suggests a vibrant and fulfilling inner life, despite a bleak outer surrounding, much like life can be nowadays under the new norm. There is more going on internally when one is on the path of enlightenment, compared to what one sees on the surface.
In the space around the central imagery we see the cosmos filled with stars and passing planets, moons or asteroids, according to your preference. This cosmic imagery is another recurring theme in what I like to call otherwordly or fantasy artworks in my portfolio.
Add to that the writing on the wall of the building, and you have a veritable host of symbolism and unspoken messages to unlock, interpret or decipher as you wish. I aim to create a sense of great depth in these artworks, as if looking through a window or seeing into infinity. It even appears – with this technique of layering visual images from foreground, middle ground and background on top of each other, that a lot is happening and the scene is full and had depth.
It even looks – on the other hand – as if one of the dragons is about to eat some of the galactic cosmos in the background. I like to have that kind of double innuendo in my images. I also like to provide imagery into which individual viewers can read whatever they subjectively perceive, or interpret from that dreamlike image.
I have minted this collage artwork on the HIVE blockchain again, since this is where almost all of my creative content is to be found, including written and visual creations. More people should be using HIVE as it is the most revolutionary blockchain because it is also a social media platform, game platform, allows for dApps, smart contracts, NFT gallery and more. It is an all-in-one blockchain and the masses will find out eventually about it.
At that point HIVE will explode. People are still stuck on the old legacy social media platforms but once they realize that there is a decentralized, uncensored, blog site which also includes NFT artworks, they will join the adoption curve. Add to that the fact that we are able to receive payment for our original creative written and visual content. There are few other blockchains that provide this and none as tried and tested by time as HIVE.
I’m probably preaching to the converted here, but I believe that time will prove HIVE to be a forerunner in decentralized and tokenized social media. It’s just a matter of time before the masses learn that they can all harness this dragon of a blockchain and ride it to the moon, as seen in today’s NFT artwork.
I have minted only two of these and only one is on sale. The other stays in my gallery portfolio for my personal collection. So check it out at https://nftshowroom.com/julianhorack/gallery/julianhorack_collages-julescape-q3-2021_harness-your-dragon and be the one to own this NFT, which is going to be a collector’s piece of great value in time to come.