Goddesses Susan Sedden Boulet

Susan Seddon Boulet: The Goddess Paintings brings together the magnificent paintings of Susan Seddon Boulet with insightful, scholarly text by Michael Babcock, a San Francisco Bay Area writer who has studied mythology extensively. Set against Babcock's backdrop of history, mythology, and psychology, Boulet's luminous paintings of Psyche, Athena, Gaia, and forty-two other goddesses come to vibrant life. These paintings are among the best known and most highly regarded of the artist's oeuvre. While gazing at these paintings I found myself becoming mesmerized, captivated, and enthralled. -- NAPRA Trade Journal

A compilation of a series of exceptional but related paintings that give expression to facets of the shamanic experience. 100 paintings are reproduced in full color.

Susan Seddon Boulet (American, b. Brazil, 1941-1997) lived life in search of the magnificent. As a child growing up on a Brazilian farm, she developed an abiding affection for animals, making them her first artistic subjects and portraying them in colorful, lively sketches. From these simple roots, creating art became central to her life. Boulet developed a unique style, an inspired vision suffused with detail, texture, and color. Her artwork reflects her innermost journey, beginning with fairy tales and evolving into powerful archetypal figures that welled up from what Carl Jung once called "the deepest springs of life." In the decades since Boulet's death, her artwork has continued to move and inspire people all over the world. Boulet is also known for her finely detailed portraits within portraits-explorations of mysterious dreams, visions, and spiritual symbols. For these paintings she drew inspiration from folklore and myth as well as shamanic and Native American traditions. Working primarily with oil pastels and ink, Boulet brought into being a numinous dimension displayed in vivid, breathing detail. Her highly personal style offers glimpses of other worlds. Seen for the first time, her images can feel familiar, known at some profound level; they often resonate with those in search of a personal truth. Even as Boulet explored the darker aspects of the psyche in her work and began her long struggle with cancer, she retained the energy, honesty, and warmth that endeared her to so many. This retrospective by Michael Babcock recounts her artistic development and celebrates her extraordinary personal journey. It includes more than two hundred reproductions of her paintings, some never before published.

James McNeill Whistler painted his mother on impulse, when she came to London to escape the American Civil War, forcing him to evict his mistress from his house. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between Whistler's outrageously flamboyant life in London--where he famously befriended Oscar Wilde and Dante Gabriel Rossetti--and the subdued, touchingly melancholic depiction of his Puritan mother he entitled "Arrangement in Grey and Black." This portrait has become one of the world's best-known paintings and an American icon, yet we know remarkably little about it. While restoring the painting for the Louvre, Sarah Walden became intrigued by the extraordinary and complex history of the painting, which had never been fully explored. From French, British, and American sources, Walden uncovers the intersections between Whistler's flawed genius, his struggle for recognition, his troubled relationship with his mother and mistresses, and the unprecedented historical response to his greatest work. Walden's findings read like a detective story, and her controversial and progressive views on art restoration combine with biography and criticism to create a gripping narrative that skillfully weaves history and aesthetics into a seamless tapestry.

In this intriguing tale (not for children), storyteller extraordinaire Ursula K. Le Guin explores the magic of animals. Her animal characters -- from the irreverent trickster Coyote to the wise matriarch Grandmother Spider -- seem like people to us, just as they do to the little girl who finds herself living among them. We learn, with the girl, that these "Old People" once lived freely on the earth but now must maintain their lifeways carefully alongside the "New People" -- humans. Susan Seddon Boulet chose this tale to illustrate, completing twenty works for its publication. They are extremely effective in bringing Le Guin's characters to life, imbuing them, of course, with Boulet's singular vision of the otherworldly realms occupied by animal spirits. This book is a must for any serious collector of Boulet art.