Painting the Hero-ine's Journey in 5 Steps - CALL TO ADVENTURE aka PANDORA'S BOX

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

Joseph Campbell

My assignment for the week for my Integrative Tranformative Art Teacher Training and Coaching Certificate is to paint the Hero-ine's Journey.

 Because I love painting, love Joseph Campbell and love telling stories this is a very exciting task.  It's weird, after doing all the creativity coaching training with Eric Maisel and trying to do art every day and not being able to manage to make anything these last few weeks in Art 4 All People training I have been doing art every day and there is no struggle at all.  Maybe all that work with Eric Maisel got me ready to get to this point.  I think also I love working in this way.

When writing about Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces Charles Olson analyzes the hero's journey to have 5 steps.

1) Call to action - which begins the adventure
2) Being transported to an alien environment - where many trials are faced and endured
3) Obtaining some kind of boon which may or may not have been the apparent goal at the start
4) Struggling back to the world from which the hero came, boon intact
5) Delivering the boon to the world, a treasure the hero could not have obtained without enduring every step of the journey

Here is the first layer of my 5 layer intuitive painting on the Hero's (Heroine's Journey)

Vogler has 12 stages to the Hero's Journey

1.ORDINARY WORLD

2. CALL TO ADVENTURE

3. RELUCTANT or REFUSE THE CALL

4. MENTOR 

5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD

6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES

7. APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE

8. ORDEAL

9. REWARD

10. THE ROAD BACK

11. RESURRECTION (transformed by the experience)

12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR

I think I will combine these two systems and paint

1. CALL TO ADVENTURE

2. TRIALS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES

3. REWARD

4. RETURN BACK

5. RETURN WITH ELIXIR

When looking at my CALL TO ADVENTURE painting it reminds me of the opening of Pandora's box.  All this junk and energy is flying out. 

 I also think of a large O'Keefe like flower. 

 I used a lot of my own hand prints.  Maybe this is me owning MY ADVENTURE.  Making sure that you know it belongs to me and is not like my sets where I am invisible.  The hand print is also something very primitive like the hand prints you see in cave paintings.

My challenge to myself is to paint one layer a day to finish by Friday evening and have the painting ready to take to my check in at Art 4 All People on Saturday morning.

I am again reminded of the quote that I keep hearing in my ear by Mother Teresa:

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

― Mother Teresa