Kali at the Birth of the Universe

2022 · Drawing

Pen and ink on A3 acid-free paper

A series of highly intricate drawings of Kali, the fierce Indian goddess so often shown in her rage. Here she presides instead over creation itself — the first emergence of light, the unfolding of the universe, and the dance of its dimensions — all rendered in the surreal ‘stream of consciousness’ aesthetic of the series.

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Kali at the Birth of the Universe

At the top of the drawing a radiant Kali stands crowned in flame, and the whole teeming field below pours out of her making. Giant tranquil faces surface like the first dreamers; a purple seed-cell glows and divides inside its orbital rings; spiked bursts of life open in the dark, and a bodhi leaf hangs among them.

Here she is not destroying but creating — the unfolding of the universe caught first-hand, at the instant form learns to come from emptiness.

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Consciousness of Kali

If the others show what Kali makes, this one turns inward to the mind that makes it. Faces rise and dissolve in a single dotted field of thought; a hand of ribbed, root-like fingers reaches to the lips, as though feeding the first word into being. Small worlds drift at the edges like ideas not yet spoken.

It is a portrait of consciousness as the ground everything else stands on — the quiet interior of the goddess from which light and form will pour.

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Dance of Kali

Here the mood lifts. Kali leaps, arms flung open, weightless against a full moon rising behind her — dancing on the three dimensions she moves through: light, spacetime, and consciousness. Leaves, planets and spirals scatter around her like sparks thrown off by the motion.

After the density of creation, this is its joy: the same goddess, playful, the cosmos for a stage.

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Kali at the Big Bang

Kali sits at the threshold of everything, one hand turned out to the viewer — an invitation to witness the first light. Down the steps beside her spills a speckled cascade of red and violet: the cosmic background radiation, the oldest light there is, pouring out of the dark. To the right a vast looping spiral unwinds across the page, tracing the path of our solar system through the galaxy.

Sword in hand and skulls at her waist, she presides here not over death but over the beginning of time.

Process

These three pencil studies came first — early sketches in blue and ochre that worked out Kali’s poses and the cosmic geometry around her. Elements from them were folded into the finished pieces; they are where the series began.

Pencil study in blue and ochre of a dancing Kali figure with a flame crown, arms outstretched, holding a small lamp. — Study I

Pencil study in blue and ochre of Kali seated on a cosmic orb ringed by orbital geometry and a triangular grid. — Study II

Pencil study in blue and ochre of a dancing figure with flame-like hair, arms raised, surrounded by curling lines. — Study III