Edition of 200
Signed and numbered
18" x 24"(standard frame size)
2 color screen print on 100lb paper
$50
The key image here is of the Hindu Goddess Kali. She is the subject of many of my pieces. Her name means time and blackness and void and she brings about the end of everything. The title is lifted from a famous poem about her called "Kali the Mother".
This is the second piece in a series depicting powerful, mythological female characters from different traditions. The first was called "Mystery, Babylon the Great" and featured "The Whore of Babylon" from the book of Revelation.
This image depicts her most well known legend.
A demon named Raktabija was wreaking havoc on the world so a group of gods came together to fight him. They all attacked him with their various weapons but unfortunately, every time Raktabija was cut, each drop of his blood became a new, fierce duplicate of him as soon as it touched the ground. Eventually, the battlefield was covered with thousands of clones of the demon and the gods were well outnumbered. The goddess Durga then summoned Kali (sometimes the story goes that she transformed into Kali). Kali arrived in a rage and immediately destroyed all of Raktabija's duplicates. She then chopped the head off the original demon drinking every drop of blood before it could touch the earth. The threat was defeated and Raktabija was dead. But Kali could not see past her own anger and she remained in her violent trance. She began stomping across the earth causing as much harm as Raktabija had and the gods found themselves in the same problem as before, unable to stop her. The gods then went to Shiva, Kali's husband, and asked him to help. When he arrived, he tried to calm her down but she was too deep in her anger to hear him. In a last effort to break her of her trance, Shiva threw his own body under her feet. She stomped him to death and she finally began to calm.
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