The number “2” represents duality, diversity, conflict, dependence, balance (two sides), stability, and reflection, which are characteristics that are very prominent throughout this piece.
In my piece Visitation, there are butterflies present. To Christians, butterflies are a symbol of eternal life and Resurrection because of their metamorphosis or transformation from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. Along with the Ancient Greeks, Christianity considers the butterfly as a “symbol of the soul.” In Japanese culture, butterflies are viewed as “souls of the living and the dead.”35 Butterflies are also symbolic after death communications—“signs that affirm a deceased family member or friend survived physical death and continues to live in another dimension of existence.”37 In these paintings, I reference the Bible for the meaning of the numbers 2, 3, and 8 and I utilize their significance.
Visitation is a depiction of a day that my children and I visited my grandmother and my brother’s grave. They each passed away in the year 2000, two months to the date of their birthdays. My youngest daughter, who was about two-years-old at the time, just laid down in the grass, began to look up at the sky and smiled. To me she looked so calm and peaceful and she seemed to be in a state of contemplation. As a mother, I wanted to capture that moment, so I took two photos of her. I had not planned to create a painting from them.
I kept referring back to those photos I had taken of my daughter some two years ago and began to see that something powerful was there. The look in her eyes was so captivating. Was she communicating with our loved ones? Were they communicating with her? The research that I had been doing on butterflies, a two-winged creature, came to mind. While butterflies symbolize after death communications, they also stand for new life, new birth, and new beginnings.
I was only going to create an image from one of the photos of my daughter but I realized I needed to continue the theme of the number two, so I decided to create two paintings. I did not want the images to be displayed the same way, so I flipped one of the images, creating a mirrored affect. Once I did that, I took a step back and noticed the way the figure’s body and dress was displayed in each painting mimicked the shape of the butterfly. The two gravestones that appear in the center of the two paintings then began to represent the body of the butterfly, which tied the entire piece together.
