Astral Pavilions

Here's another visionary landscape with dream architecture. This is only somewhat inspired by esoteric literature. My inspiration here is the fantastic architecture of Renaissance and early modern stage sets. These Baroque designs were used in theater, opera, and elaborate entertainments staged by royalty or nobility to impress guests and show off the king's power. Some of this fantasy architecture featured conical pavilions or temples which were covered with elaborate ornament and flaming points of light.

Many of the visionary 19th and 20th century texts used the seven spectrum colors as a theme so that angelic stations or temples of sacred flames appeared in these rainbow colors. In my visionary landscape, there are seven temples in the complex, each of them in one of the traditional colors. The largest one here is the Temple of the Violet Ray, and further in the distance you see the Light Blue and the Green Ray Temples. If you were in this scene, the other colored temples would be behind you. All of this is visible to the dreamer, dressed in a black and purple robe, who appears under a little gazebo to the right. I designed all the ground architecture which is meant to guide astral pilgrims along the pathways to and from the temples. Note the half-moon which is unusual in lunar representations. 

I have not shown this before on the By-Product because my photo of this piece was poor. This is the best image I could get, and some of it is still out of focus. However, it's pretty, and it's one of my favorite of my "astral world" or "New Age" paintings. 

"Astral Pavilions" is acrylic on illustration board (with airbrush), 25" x 20", August 2001. Click on the image to sort of get a better view.

Dreamy colors and rainbow rays…painted in August 2001. The very next month, things went to hell.