This painting combines a lot of thoughts and symbols so read on!

 

Perhaps you've heard that a woman's life can be broken into three phases: 

Maiden, Mother, Crone.

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Personally I prefer calling them M3 for alliteration and for contemporary context:
Maiden, Menstruating, Matriarch. 

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The three roses in this painting are symbols of these phases: the small bud represents young girls before they fully know their purpose/calling, the bud that is opening represents adult women as they start to learn and explore their purpose, and the rose in full bloom represents mature/wise women who have embraced their purpose.

 

Personally I'm somewhere in between the middle and large rose.

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Additionally I've been thinking about that purpose/calling/spirit....it seems to be used to talk about experiences and feelings beyond our physical body. It usually falls into the realm of religion but I think it's too big to be bound by churches or doctrine. 

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There is one branch of science tries to explain the unexplainable--quantum physics. Check out my BLOG post where I look at it in a very rudimentary and basic way. As I understand it, the bottom line is that we really don't know much.

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One fabulous health care provider I work with, Margo Covington, has a fascinating perspective on being human and the spirit. She thinks that the "Big Reason" we are here is that our immortal spirit wants to experience being human and to accomplish that it uses the body but more specifically the mind, heart/body, and emotions. 

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As Margo and I talked I had the idea to build on my heart painting and create a spirit painting and a brain painting. 

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This painting explores the spirit which I also call our our inner voice or our purpose (culturally a white rose represents purity, spirituality, innocence, pure love, affection, and compassion) against all the intense emotions, danger, passion, and fear (symbolized by a shimming red background and dramatic lighting) that we experience in our lives.

 

It’s a reminder to me that no matter what is going on around us, our spirit is radiant and ever present--remove the red and the lighting and you have an elegant white rose.