Rebirth:
Starting Over as an Artist
— Part 1 —
Preparation and the Hidden Light in All of Nature
‘Rebirth’ is a painting inspired by my starting over as an artist and my compulsion to redefine my identity, direction and aesthetic.
As I near my mid-forties, I am re-evaluating my goals and my voice as as an artist. What legacy would I like to leave behind?
My personal reasons for starting over as an artist
I had taken a prolonged hiatus from focused and steady work in the studio. With all the internal and external distractions over the last couple of years, I had struggled to get back into a ‘flow state’.
Moving to a new city and a new house, and setting up a new studio meant I experienced a natural break from my usually prodigious output, and allowed me the space to consider starting over as artist.
I began growing flowers and vegetables on our large property, as well as composing a lot of music. For some reason, this is what I preferred to do rather than painting. It was as if creating art no longer felt like a safe space, or I wasn’t yet ready.
Perhaps sub-consciously I felt a natural inertia and resistance toward the burden of redefining myself, and thus procrastinated from actualizing on this personal journey.
But I also knew that things were gestating under the surface. I knew I didn’t want to be the same artist anymore. And I wanted my art to be a more authentic reflection of my own internal state, psychologically and spiritually.
I think reinvention and rebirth comes with the territory as an artist. I pity those unimaginative, ‘production-line’ artists that seem so popular in fashion magazines, painting the same dribble everyday and catering to their audience. That doesn’t interest me.
Change and growth are important aspects not only for an artist, but for a person in general. Sometimes the old work has become stale and you’ve outgrown it by several light-years.
Channelling the Muse
There is a very large aspect to creativity that seems beyond conscious control. Sometimes I think of myself as just a medium or conduit for something outside of myself (or perhaps it’s a very deep part of myself) that always surprises me when it surfaces.
Thus I have tried to learn to trust the process.
I’ve found a lot of similarities and the same gestative processes between composing music, improvising on the guitar or violin, sowing seeds in the garden, and painting. There’s a sense of letting go and allowing things to happen naturally.
Perhaps this is why the artists of the Ancient World were so fascinated and obsessed by the Muses. They recognised it as both an internal and external phenomenon; invoking as well as evoking the goddesses of purity, goodness and creation.
Perhaps they saw creative processes as essentially feminine. As I’m sure any mother could testify: one has to be open to birth something new.
In this painting called ‘Rebirth’, I’ve taken the traditional artist’s practice of invoking Venus as Muse.
Preparation for starting over as an artist
Being surrounded by nature as I am is an incredible gift. I knew that I was just a seedling in the dark, fertile soil of creative potential. Opening myself to the inspiration I found everywhere, both in the environment and internally, is the first step of the journey.
Dreams and connecting to the deeper self are vital here.
The next is profound reflection and meditation, in the sense that I immerse myself in the inner world that I wish to portray.
Here, I am heavily inspired and influenced by music, reading and studying artworks.
I write down my ideas for paintings in a notebook, do several sketches and scribbles to figure out compositions, and visualise the painting in my mind. I ask myself what it is that I want to portray; what I want to say, and what has special and private significance for me.
Venus, the Goddess of Love, Inspiration and Perfection
As I woke before sunrise and saw Venus, the Morning Star above the horizon, I reflected on the stillness of the morning, still so full of potential.
I thought about the many characteristics of Venus. As the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon, Venus traces a pentagram star or rose-shaped pattern around the sun every 8 years. Thus, she is represented by the pentagram and the five-petalled dog rose.
Because of her regular and predictable pattern inscribed on the sky, it helped ancient people to create calendars, mark the months of the year, and figure out the procession of the equinoxes.
The goddess of love, beauty, perfection, fertility and new beginnings, Venus has been an inspiration for artists since the dawn of civilization. Venus is the Goddess of the Dawn. Here’s a brief article on the muse.
As the Roman goddess Venus, she was also known to the Greeks as the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, and as the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess Eostre, from where the name of the holiday ‘Easter’ originates.
She marks the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere; the time of Spring when all of nature is re-birthed.
Venus was also associated with the sign Virgo as the celestial virgin, known to the Romans as Venus Caelestis or Venus of the Heavens. She is the ruling planet of Libra (my own sign), and Librans are supposedly strongly influenced by Venus in matters of love, beauty, harmony, and relationships.
She is represented by the gentle dove and the foam of the sea, often depicted as born from the waves and carried gently toward shore in a shell.
Venus and Christ
As you can tell, there are many connections between the life of Christ (also sometimes known as the Morning Star or Star of the East) and Venus. (Jesus identifies himself as the “bright morning star” in Revelations 22:16.)
Born of the Celestial Virgin and the symbol of resurrection or of being born again, Jesus represents new life, and the light of hope. A dove descended from heaven when He was baptised (the Holy Spirit or Divine Inspiration) and Jesus rose again on Easter.
The baptism and inspiration
Baptisms always seem to mark the beginning of a journey or process. Traditionally, it’s babies that are baptised in the church. Jesus was baptised at the beginning of His evangelism here on earth.
To be baptised means to be symbolically cleansed from the sin of the past and made new again. It is a significant moment to be taken earnestly. It is a moment of grace.
I wanted to incorporate a lot of the inspirations I had garnered from hundreds of paintings depicting Venus from artists of the past, as well as from my own meditations and research; from mythology, the Scriptures, from alchemy and astrology; and most especially from Nature, in this painting.
The French word Renaissance comes from the Latin ‘renasci’ which means ‘rebirth’ or to be ‘born again’.
I was therefore heavily influenced by Renaissance art (as well as Baroque); namely paintings by Botticelli, Titian, Rubens, Perugino, and Guido Reni.
The many-layered metaphors and allegories within this painting make it very personally significant for me, especially while starting over as an artist.
To get a sense of the scope of my inspirations, check out the video above called Preparation and the Hidden Light in All of Nature.
The music for this video is a piece I composed and performed: Sonata for Solo Guitar No.1 in F.
I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for the next video where I show my painting process, as well as making my own pigments for this painting.
This is my YouTube channel The Painter’s Sanctum.
You can check out some more of my allegorical realism paintings here.
- What’s the Point of Creating When No One Cares? - 24th August 2025
- Fantasia No.6 in G minor (The Cockatrice) - 3rd May 2025
- Rebirth: Starting Over as an Artist — Part 1 - 17th April 2025