"Spindles of Necessity"
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| Prophase | Metaphase | Anaphase | Late Anaphase | Telophase |
In this series, the process of mitosis has been superimposed with tale Plato included in "Republic" about the goddess Ananke, which translates to "necessity", and the immortality of the soul. She is a weaver with a spinning wheel., goddess of necessity and mother of "the fates". In Plato's dream, she is up in the sky spinning out the planets and the universe with her spinning wheel. A group of souls arrives and are drawn up into the sky on arcs of light emerging from her spinning wheel, in the shape of a rainbow. Souls travel up these strands to their destiny, a sort of heaven.
At the bottom of the paintings are cyclic greek characters. In the first of the series, Prophase, we see Demeter with Persephone, a Greek character that lives a cyclic life, half the year above ground and half below with Hades, to whom she is bound to return each year. In this first painting, she is with her mother - thus the whole cell. In the next three paintings, Metaphase, Anaphase and Late Anaphase, will see the cycle of Dionysus. He is born from the thigh of Zeus, then his dancing and drinking with the Maenads. The Titans tear him apart, and he is then reborn in the spring, like the cuttiing back and regrowth of the grape vines each year. In the last painting, Telophase, we see Persephone with Hades in the underworld. She is now apart from her mother, in another world, and we see the two worlds reflected in the two newly divided cells.
There are many details in the paintings that can not be seen at this resolution, as the originals are 3' x 4', oil on canvas.
Below you can see larger versions of the paintings, and sketches for a few more paintings yet to be realized on Apoptosis. There are also sketches of the Mitosis series before they were executed.
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| Apoptosis below.Nuclear apoptosis painting on left, Mitotic apoptosis on right. Thanatos (greek god of death) puncturing a mitochondria on the bottom left of each painting, and Atropos, the "fate" that snips the thread of someone's life when it is their time on the right, snipping a piece of DNA as a thread. Nuclear apoptosis painting on the left below has daughters of Orion, killing themselves in self-sacrifice for the good of the city, to stop the plague at the advice of an oracle. The gods turn them into comets as a reward. |
On right, mitotic apoptosis. Jason's father (of Jason and the Argonauts) forced to comit suicide by King Pelias by drinking (poisonous) bull's blood. I think of the bull's blood like chemotherapy to the cancer cell. Both paintings also have the cell breaking up into characteristic little globules at the edges. |
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Summary from http://www.mythinglinks.org/ct~weaving.html:
"Myths of weaving exist around the world as metaphors for creation. The spindle is often an axis mundi and its whirling whorls serve a cosmogonic function. Plato, for example, had a vision of the great goddess Ananke, "Necessity," spinning the universe; the sun, moon, and planets were her spindle's whorls; sirens sang through the webs of time and fate that she wove, and souls endlessly moved through the strands on their way to and from death and rebirth. Many goddesses are spinners and weavers: the Fates of ancient Greece; Athena, also of Greece; Neith of ancient Egypt; in Teutonic myth the Norns spin secret meanings into life; in the American southwest, Grandmother Spider Woman spins all life from the shimmering threads in her belly."
Platos writing:
http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/407642