:: 2011 :: 90cm x 90cm :: Acrylics, Inks, Markers and UV Lacquer on Canvas ::
This large format complex work reimagines the mythological figure of Glaucos as a pre-Greek Aegean sea deity, flanked by octopuses, fish and the honey pot for which he is famous. Night reveals the Glaucos of the labyrinth, both as the sacrament of the yellow-horned poppy but also the three stages of the Minoan Age Grade: Sphaireos ('Ball Player') to represent the Child, Polyeidos ('Many Ideas') the Adolescent, and Drako Derkomai ('Serpent Who Sees') to represent the transformed Adult. These three images surround the sacrament in the centre, the Melikouros ('Honey Man') and to the right, the goddess Athena Glaukopis ('Athena the Owl-Eyed') presides over the whole process of becoming.
This work expresses my updated view that Glaucos was not merely a Minoan deity, but judging from the plethora of stories from around the Aegean, had a much wider cult, and whose spheres of influence included the depths of the sea (and thus in some ways analogous to later Poseidon), the entheogenic sacrament of the labyrinth preserved in honey, and the archetypal image of the boy transformed into a man which is an apt symbol for an Age-Grade initiation system such as is often theoriused for pre-Greek Aegean society.
"No one knows better than I the secret of herbs, for I was transformed by herbs" - Glaucos in Ovid's Metamorphoses
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