The Archetypal Art of Sunny Strasburg

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Every art piece is printed on high quality canvas, full bleed, with archival ink, and a gloss fixative glaze. Each print is hand-signed by the artist. The art is ready for stretching or mounting and framing. Click on the purchase link next to each image to get yours

The Tree Detail 1 by Sunny Strasburg

The Tree Detail 2

The Tree : medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Tree with Paypal, CLICK HERE

This piece is about FAITH. Knowing..KNOWING…
not believing that we are cared for and looked
after in this Benevolent Universe.

Sometimes when we look up at the sky and ask for guidance,
we don’t *see* that the Universe is looking back at us–
because we can’t pull our lens back far enough
to see the grand scheme of it all
from our limited (physical reality) vantage point.

In finding our true life purpose, the old saying, “Sometimes we can’t see the water we swim in” comes to mind. Our calling can seem too obvious, because it IS us–digging down to what is inside rather than finding something outside and trying to be a “should” that someone else perscribes for us.

Explore your own depths, uncover your own treasure within. Your emotions are your treasure map. Use them to guide you in the right direction. Anything that charges you up, positive or negative is a clue….turn right, turn left, go back, proceed with caution….dig here….

However familiar our life purpose is, we still must leave the shore of what is known (aahhh, once again) and embark on the journey into the unknown. Take heart, Explorers, your ship is well equipped with supplies and strong sails (your inner strengths and talents). And the adventure is scary and yet, holds exciting treasures on the new shores of -self- discovery!

Balam Vision Serpents Detail 1

Balam with Vision Serpents : medium: graphite and digital
20″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$85.00 plus shipping

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Rising
by Martin Stensaas http://www.martinstensaas.com

Rising
Like a wet tooth in the sunlight,
A smile in the glare,
A shiny hollow fang.
Some new element carried within
Aluminum rises almost to space
From the fuzzy jungled mountains
Up through the florid coat of air.
This treasure arcs.
By what miracle do we arrive
Here at the pinnacle of time?
The whole infinity engine
At our backs
Gently guiding
The parabola of our emergence.
Within this cone of experience
Rides this improbable rarity:
Our collected family
Having maneuvered the past,
Even nourished in careful craft
As single cells under glass,
In the prefect medium,
We are always playing God.
Once again, spores of the future
In a gleaming hull.
-
Over the Sea
Through the light and over the living skin,
Thick air on trees,
In and out of lungs,
These vapors, risen off the ancient Dream.
We have been
Over these waters so many times.
Through these distances, rain and river.
The air, too, slowly pulled
Through shell, rock, volcano, and leaves.
Oxygen, carbon, and on through the profusion…
All this a fossil
Prayer enduring
Of a long gone Great Grandfather Star,
A parting gift from the Core.
-
These voices,
A comfortable knowing
Of souls that fit,
And the littler voices,
Variations on a soul:
Shared and split, shared and split.
We look out the windows of the plane:
Sapphire night deepening into stars.
And little golden webs of light below.
Behold the patterns these creatures make,
Decorating the darkness.
Around us, little golden voices
Weaving stories
Shared and split
Shining in the void
So rare and concentrated
These gems of long-ago
Stars.

The Crone Detail 1 by Sunny Strasburg

The Crone Detail 2 by Sunny Strasburg

The Crone : medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

The Crone
We begin life in Solutio- the element of water. We are One…merged with both our personal Mother, as well as the Cosmic Mother.

As we grow and develop from adolescence into adulthood, we feel the itch to explore the bigger world. We heed the call of the wild. We leave what is known and embark on our own heroine or hero’s journey. We enter the dark depths of the unknown–the Calcinatio, the element of fire. It is here we find our ultimate fear– the Dragon of our shadow. We must conquer this dragon in order to snatch the treasured pearl it clutches in its claws. The symbol of this pearl is our individuation.

During the next stage of development, we emerge into Sublimatio- the element of air. We have successfully navigated our own fears and life’s challenges, and arise triumphant. The kundalini rises from the fire of will into the airy expanse of a spiritual zenith.

The Crone:

As we move into the phase of pro generation, and feel closure in the sublimated celebration, we descend from the lofty heights of Sublimatio down into Coagulatio, the earth element. We ground back into Mother Earth. In our adventures, we have developed into wise old crones and wise men.

As crones, we have returned home after a long, arduous journey. The thirst to have new experiences and challenged is quenched and we are satiated.

In the place of Grandmother/Grandfather, we sit back and muse. We culminate life experience and knowledge and pass it along in story. And then we prepare for our own deeper descent into Mother Earth, into the arms of Death.

Gaia Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Gaia : medium: graphite and digital
20″ x 24″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$73.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Baptism with Paypal, CLICK HERE

This piece, Gaia was inspired by a dream of climbing up a giant goddess’ leg as she lumbered out of the water. In the dream, I was male, and so tiny. She glanced down at me briefly and smiled– as one might notice a grasshopper, and kept on moving. I clung to her leg desperately, in utter astonishment and awe of her power.

Balam with Shipibo Octopi

Balam with Shipibo Octopi : medium: graphite and digital
20″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$85.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Balam with Shipibo Octopi with Paypal, CLICK HERE

Crimson Ribbon Atonement
Sunny Strasburg, MFTI
*names have been changed

I am gripped with fear. My heart is pounding in my throat.
I’m dizzy.

I look over at the man I’ve spent the past twenty years with and he looks like a stranger. Marty smiles, reassuring me, nonplussed. Marty is ready to delve into every nook and cranny of both inner and outer space. He seems perplexed by my doubt and writhing fear.

I swallow hard and lean over to whisper in Marty’s ear, “Screw this. I’m out of here.”
Pause….
“Should I leave?!”

Here’s that damn, benevolent smile still, and a pat on the knee, “I can’t make that decision for you. Only you can.”

We are all seated on the floor in a circle, our backs leaning against the wall. The lights dim in the circular thatched hut. It looks quite beautiful. Imagine a jungle scene and a group of twenty people all dressed in white, glowing in the dim light. The image of lambs going to slaughter flashes in my mind.

The presiding shaman walks in and a hush sweeps over the circle. Deep reverence for all that is holy settles over us. We all know there is no chance at even attempting to be elusive or fake here. These experiences are notoriously ego shredding and humbling.

The shaman begins speaking in a firm, crisp Spanish. I can’t understand her, and this intensifies my anxiety.
“What did she say?” I hiss to Marty.
The “Helpers” pass out puke buckets into which we are to purge the evil spirits. Everyone smiles and nods as the buckets are placed in front of them. This is nuts. How in the hell did I agree to participate in such insanity?

Suddenly the translator’s commands interrupt my escape plan,
“Stay Centered.”
“Remember Gratitude.”
“Breathe Deeply. Breath is essential in this practice.”

As a Jungian therapist and regular meditator, I am keenly aware of all the defense mechanisms and elaborate mental constructs we create to defend against facing the unknown. We have a strong propensity to create the illusion of control as a coping mechanism, and to help us make sense of what seems like a chaotic world. Inevitably, what lives beneath a desire for control is straight up fear—the fear of chaos.

This fear of chaos is nothing new. Our ancestors’ food supply was completely dependant on the weather. Its moods affected their basic survival. In order to create some semblance of control, they performed rain dance rituals. Elaborate rituals of sacrifice and prayer have been created to mediate our fear of death—the ultimate surrender of control.
And the fear of chaos continues, perhaps even intensified, today. Maybe we check our stocks online five times a day to be sure our investments are still there—to gain a sense of control over an unpredictable environment.
Today, we are feeling more out of control than ever. I believe that has partly contributed to the pervasive archetype of the apocalypse in the psyches of North Americans. There are vast arenas of life where we have no clue about how it all works, let alone an ability to participate in the outcome. For example, a very small percentage of North Americans know how or where their food is grown. Most of us have no clue how to survive without the food production complex we take for granted each day. Ponder the enormous amount of trust we place in the elaborate system from seed to growth, fruit, collection, transport, shipment and finally, sale to bring that banana from Chile to your fruit bowl.

And in the past few weeks, knowing I would be here tonight, facing all of those fears, has created an acute awareness of my need for control as a way to negate my very intense fear of unpredictability.
By all accounts, a spectrum of stories has ranged from absolutely terrifying to sublime, but involved dissolution of ego and surrender of all control.

The shaman calls us up one by one to take the sacrament. When I crawl on my hands and knees to the altar, I beg, “Chico….Suave….Muy Sensitiva!”
She’s an alchemist, pouring the brew back and forth in different containers.
Her eyes twinkle and a warm smile spreads across her face. It reminds me of a sunrise. She hands me the cup and says, “Salud, Sunny.”
The Circle repeats, “Salud, Sunny”
I hesitantly swallow the contents.

Rewind back three months ago. I am standing in my kitchen crying and looking out of the window at the snow falling. I am in the throes of addiction. Not to heroin or cocaine, but to coffee, stimulation, chaos, sugar and deep sadness. A chronic ennui has settled in and I feel numb. I desperately want off this treadmill of the anesthetic boredom and the chronic low level anxiety that pervades my life.

I wonder, where has my sparkle gone? I used to be curious and inquisitive, precocious in my connection to synchronicity and magic. I feel alone and disassociated, although I am surrounded by a doting husband, three rambunctious kids and tons of friends.

I also feel void of spirit. My job as a therapist has me caught in an intellectual reductivism in which everyone, including myself, seems like a tribe of lost souls– sad, dysfunctional and misguided with distorted coping skills and elaborate defense mechanisms.

When the offer came to go deep into the jungle to meet the “Ultimate Grandmother Spirit” it felt like it was time, perhaps even a second chance at rekindling a holy relationship to this life of mine.

As I sit in the circle awaiting the effects of my medicine, I send out a series of last minute, desperate pleas for help, “Please Grandmother, help me find magic. Help me overcome these addictions. Help me love myself.”

I wait in grueling anticipation. From all accounts, this isn’t going to be a gentle, Sunday drive. It will be a gut wrenching (literally), gritty, ego stripping, denial blasting rollercoaster ride. And I am trapped in the rollercoaster car. It’s ratcheting up a gigantic hill.
Click…..Click….Click…..

But just now, a delicate vision of a neon triangle begins subtly pulsing on the horizon. The shaman begins a lilting whistle—an ancient melody thousands of years old. It’s so beautiful and soothing. I feel my jaw soften and relax. However, this nice effect is bluntly interrupted by someone 10 feet away belching loudly, and then retching with a splash in their bucket.

Ugh.

Then another and another…in some kind of crazy call and answer Barf-o-rama.
“Oh my God! This is ridiculous!” I say out loud.
My husband begins shaking uncontrollably and lurches forward, puking into his bucket.
But then, thankfully, I am saved by my attention shifting back to the pulsing triangle against the velvety black backdrop of my closed eyelids. A face emerges almost like a toy pinscreen. Her face transforms into a jaguar and star constellations spread out and away from her divine face.
I whisper, “Mother.”

The vision morphs into a tactile sensory one, rather than visual. My awareness moves into the body of a jaguar cub. I can literally feel my face as if I had a blunt, furry muzzle and my articulate fingers and hands have been replaced by big, club-like paws. I knead these paws into a warm, soft belly, seeking a nipple to suckle.
I am startled by a warm breath in my left ear, She says, “You are of the Puma Clan.”

This medicine had been working in my body for weeks before I actually took it. I found it to be unsettling and strange. A special diet was requested of the pilgrims. I was strongly advised to give up sugar, salt, miscellaneous foods, alcohol, and most challenging in my case, caffeine. It was extremely difficult, that is the caffeine and sugar part. I realized I hadn’t gone without either of those substances for a single day for the past six years. The withdrawals were intense. It was very enlightening to realize how I had been abusing my body to kick start it with empty energy. Force it to take action—get through long days at work, to exercise intensely, and power through long study hours in graduate school.
My utter exhaustion had been masked for years. Adrenals were blown; thyroid was on the fritz—burning out on caffeinated nitro.

Then, the night before ceremony, as I was stirring to consciousness from a vivid, strange dream, I heard a gong and loud, and these clear words.

“BONG!….Atonement. BONG!….Atonement. BONG!…..Atonement.”

The fading dream was of certain family members, and how our family culture was pushing what we didn’t want to face down into the shadows of the subconscious. I realized I individually do the same thing. I saw how my past actions have turned my heart cold to Marty, my kids, family and friends. This disassociation was a form of blind cruelty- both toward my self and them. I had been twisting a blind knife, unknowingly. However I remain responsible for their confusion and hurt. I had become so afraid of being victimized, that I turned into a zombie, unable to love and connect fully with anyone, including myself, and therefore becoming the victimizer—emotional neglect. This happens to be a quite common affliction in the West, a coping strategy that most people employ. Out of a fear of abandonment, I was continuing the legacy of that two sided coin of victim/victimizer.

Heaviness gripped my chest and I began to uncontrollably sob. Marty rolled over and soothed me, which only amplified my guilt. I sobbed and confessed my guilt of a closed heart. Of course he accepted my apology, but this exoneration was not his to give. I felt we are all in a great, karmic wheel. I had to fully and undeniably experience how I have affected others before I could be forgiven.

Finally the retching in the circle has subsided. My jaguar-cub awareness shifts into a past life vision of an existence as a Spanish Conquistador traveling to the New World. I feel pride in my heart to serve the Queen. I am an important representative of my country, and a spreader of the true word of the Holy Church. I am standing in tall grass. It is incredibly hot and humid. I am weighed down by the partial armor I’m wearing, and can smell the sweat, saturated in my clothing. We stand, weapons drawn as the natives emerge from the jungle. They are innocent and small, like children or animals. They reach out to us and we brutally cut off their hands.

The next horrific scene jumps ahead to the devastation after the massacre that followed. There are natives strewn across the jungle floor, their bodies bloody and rotting, covered with dirt and leaves. Baskets are spilled, and children are starving next to dead mothers.

Again I am sobbing with guilt. I thought I was doing well for my country and for my faith, but now I realize that I have been extraordinarily cruel.

Then Jaguar Mother startles me again and repeats her firm words in my ear, “You are of the Puma clan.”

I flew back through time and landed in yet another past/future(?) lifetime as an indigenous man living somewhere in South America. I am sitting in a long house with others. I am young, having just walked through the portal of becoming a man, sitting with the party of hunters. Each month, on the full moon, we hunt the nocturnal animals at night. We are preparing little bundles of cooked paste—a magical vine/leaf combo that makes us able to see in the dark– night vision. I note that it is comparable to the technology we employ in the modern times (metal, silicon and plastics to create weapons, computers and vehicles). In this life as an indigenous, we use plant and spirit “technology” to enhance performance.
This lifetime has an ease and harmony—a counterbalance to the last vision as a Conquistador. We speak gently to each other, smile and joke with love in our hearts.

The shaman’s ancient melodies tune in again. The harmony becomes synaesthetic crimson ribbons spilling from her tongue. Each note becomes a ruby feather slowly falling to the ground. I am now lucid enough to form organized thought. I have this incredibly strange realization that several iterations of my “Selves” are split and having a myriad of experiences. One part is witnessing- void of emotion or judgment. This is the ego, or separate Self, merely observing. Another Self is organizing thoughts. Yet another is tuning into the music and the ribbon metaphor. And yet another had turned inward and scanning my physical body.

As I scan my body for illness or disease, I am told to send love to each organ. I begin with my uterus, thanking it for the way it has beautifully served me, nurturing and bringing my three children into my life. I send love and thank my ovaries, my large intestine, my liver…each organ and system is thanked and sent love for all it has done to support and host my soul in this lifetime. When I reach my thyroid, I see it’s energy is a bit off. To heal it, I am told to do yoga postures which will open the throat chakra, to breathe deeply, continue being gentle with my body, and compassionate toward myself. My thyroid gland turns into an iridescent, blue morpho butterfly and vibrates as Grandmother heals it.

I ask Grandmother if I am too hard on my body by exercising too much. I am surprised at her response, that no, our bodies are meant to be used. She showed me that throughout human existence, we have worked all day and modern, sedentary life is not what our bodies are evolved and built to do. She added to continue with the diet—lots of organic, fresh vegetables and fruit, less sugar, and no coffee. It was surprising to me how practical her advice was—like a real grandmother might offer!

Another shift and I found that one of my Selves is scanning members of my families’ bodies. In one, I could see a fatty lump on one side of the heart and the need to exercise more and eat less sugar and fat. I also see that the colon was developing problems and to encourage the person to get a colonoscopy. It is conveyed that because this person has suppressed trauma both from childhood, and then built upon this suppression in adulthood by further denial, it was resulting in a physical manifestation of coagulated, toxic energy in the body….A symptom of a heavy heart.

I scan another person’s body and it comes to me that she is overall healthy and that it was beneficial to her physical health that she lost weight recently. This had averted a disastrous path and was cleansing for her mind, body and spirit.
Suddenly, this triggers a sadness I have about my family being estranged and distant. I request Grandmother to heal the split. (Incidentally, two days after the ceremony, my mom sent me a message she was invited, out of the blue, to her brother’s house for dinner, where the entire family, aunts, uncles, cousins were gathered. She felt very healed to reconnect after ten years of distance). I request Grandmother to help me become less judgmental and more tolerant of others’ differences. I ask to be willing to listen and open my heart more to those who are different than I am.

Once again, my dominant awareness shifts back into my present time and space. The beautiful chirping insects and croaking frogs are not just the usual background textural noise, but layered deeply and singing along with the shaman. The volume is becoming louder and louder and louder in intensity until it’s a deafening roar. Then a “RRRRrreeeaaaaaoooOOOOooowWWW!” and a “WWwhhhooooosssshhhhh!”. All sounds disappear, leaving only a faint crumpling, wax-paper sound.

The imagery shifts and one of my Selves stands up and leaves my physical body sitting in lotus position. I walk down to my room on the farm. I go outside, to the beautiful, outdoor shower I had been enjoying all week. Standing in the space, to my utter shock and amazement is Brad looking absolutely radiant, just showered, with a towel wrapped around his waist. I am so surprised because Brad was killed the year before in a horrible car accident. He was young and beautiful and just awakening to his potential and intrinsic joy. His death left many, many people in deep grief and sadness at a beautiful life ended prematurely. But here he is, incredibly real, with the big, infectious grin I remember.

The first day he arrived at the farm a week ago, one of the helpers, Jake warmly greeted us. I was taken aback at how much he resembled Brad- his face and mannerisms, even his voice had an uncanny similarity. I was so impacted by it, I had remarked to Marty on the way to our room that I was shaken up by the resemblance. I had shed a few tears reminiscing about Brad because Jake had evoked such a strong presence of him.

In the vision, Brad looks deeply into my eyes and says, “Thank you, Sunny. Thank you for the way you helped me. I came to tell you I am OK.” I lean forward in my lotus position and spontaneously move into child’s pose, crying. The image of Jake’s resemblance to him flashes in my mind as a question. Brad rests a hand on my shoulder and says gently, “Sunny, its no accident he looks like me. I am here with you. You helped me and now I am here to help you.” I receive an understanding that all my psychotherapy clients heal me as much as I heal them in a beautiful balance of co-creation and collaboration.

One by one, each of the autistic children from the school, the site of my first internship, approaches me with a huge smile and thanks for my care. Their faces come close to mine and hold my eyes in deep compassion and connection—a silent gesture of deep appreciation and gratitude. All of my therapy clients appear, from the drug rehab center to my present clients, one at a time in a wordless parade of gracious smiles and loving, twinkling eyes. And I cry, I cry with gratitude for their thanks, for allowing me to witness and accompany them on their beautiful unfolding journeys into self awareness, and most of all for healing me along their journeys. Then the parade extends to my children, my family, my friends, past co-workers and even old enemies, each person presenting a smile and deep, witnessing eyes of appreciation.

The exquisite exchange of energy we have provided one another, for growth and ever-increasing self-awareness is duly noted and witnessed. I also see that the art I create is incredibly powerful as a healing tool. And that it’s creation and distribution is an important contribution to help heal people in this time of great change and challenge.

These are the sounds, sights and smells that my journey concludes with. I find myself landing, touching the earth again. I sink down into the cushions I have been sitting on and drift off to sleep with the shaman’s lullabies to accompany me.
In what seems like a moment later, we are awakened with the shaman’s clear voice, this time in English (?).
“Now we are going to ask each person how you are feeling and if you want to share.”

It had been six hours. As I listen to each person in the circle speak, it becomes clear that every single journey has been completely varied in content and emotion. Some experienced intense horror and fear, others bliss, and some, transcendental expansion.
My journey was “muy suave” as requested. Spirit conveyed that much of my shadow work had extended outside of ceremony in the weeks of preparation.

We all stand up slowly, exhausted and stagger outside. The moon is full, the sky is full of glitter, giving us a light show- not only are the stars outrageously sparkly, but the fireflies are continuing the constellations in 3-D all around us. We are standing in an iridescent cyan fairy land. Pilgrims dressed in white blink wide-eyed and innocent, like babies just born. Our hearts are cracked open and swollen so big, we can almost see them beating in one another’s chests. We hold one another and cry in gratitude.

The Baptism Detail by Sunny Strasburg

The Baptism : medium: graphite and digital
20″ x 24″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$85.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Baptism with Paypal, CLICK HERE

I had an interesting dream last night. An owl hopped into the bedroom of our casita here in Costa Rica. Everyone was afraid and ran to the back room, but I stayed, not frightened at all by the owl. She turned her head and peered at me from what became just one huge, owl eye. In the dream, as they often do, the body and head of the owl morphed away leaving just the one enormous eye. As I examined it in more detail, I noticed the eye had peculiar feathers around it like the ticks of a clock.

Hmm….wisdom, seeing into my inner life, and the clock’s ticking!

I find I’m settling into a rhythm that feels very much like “Sunny Heaven”. Perhaps the owl was telling me to pay attention to what I am feeling, awakening to here on my travels through Costa Rica.A typical day here looks something like this……

After a long, comfy sleep snuggling with my man, kids tucked in safe and listening to the tropical crickets, I get up with the sun while everyone else stays curled up under the covers. I tiptoe into the kitchen of our little casita and put on coffee. I get my running gear, strap on my iPod and heart rate monitor and gulp down a cup of café negro. Then I head out for a run on the trails, the beach, along the road, whatever offers itself in the different lodges we stay in.

Inevitably, at this early hour, the birds are going nuts, singing their hearts out. Sometimes I spot animals, come across a surprise waterfall. Sometimes I run past Ticos walking along the roadside. We both smile and nod, “Buenas Dias.” My biggest fear when I’m out alone like this is being bitten by unfenced, unleashed dogs as I run past Tico homes, but I have yet to face any real threat. I’m not even fazed by the whistles from the Ticos. I look pretty tough and determined—way more muscular than the lithe Ticas.

Running back to our lodging, I’m drenched with sweat, deliriously happy and unusually covered in mud from slipping around some random trail I found along the way. Now, if you haven’t experienced this, I can’t even express in words how sublime and unrivalled a shower outside in a garden is. There is something so soothing to my soul to be out in nature in my natural state, looking at greenery feeling the cold water. Follow that with a slathering of warm coconut oil on tired muscles and I could die right then, happy and completely fulfilled.

Marty and the kids are just getting up, sleepy eyed and hair sticking up all over. We all meander down to whatever the long house style kitchen is for a hearty breakfast of Casado, usually Gallo Pinto—eggs, beans and rice with a side of bacon or friend plaintains, more café negro. Delicioso!

The rest if the days are usually filled with adventures with the family—driving listening to the iPod on the rental car stereo. There’s something surreal about Glitch or Dubstep spewing out of the speakers as we drive past farmers wearing knee-high boots and coffee bags with stray dogs trotting alongside them down in the road.

The afternoons are spent napping, playing at the pool, or trails to waterfalls, the beach, or some great discovery—like a fruit stand with soursop juice, or an indigenous craftwork stand.

The sun sets and the crickets begin their uproar. Sometimes we listen to howler monkeys or the ocean waves crashing under the moon. Marty and I have wine and talk. That kind of idle conversation we never have in the States—where time has slowed down and there’s room for consideration, long pauses and thoughtful replies.

This for me is when old memories spring up, having hibernated for decades in the back recesses of my mind. Random memories of little trips Marty and I took together long before we had kids, conversations we’ve had, summers as a girl, my sullen teen years. Last night, I remembered a specific time I walked my little Jenny dog around the canal next to the house where I grew up in a small town in Utah. I smiled, comparing how I am the same even to this day—needing that alone time to think, to process. Now I take my black lab, Squid trail running.

This is also when I dream about who I really am, what I really want in life. Not pressured by external forces, it most often happens here in Costa Rica. I feel free to consider my natural cycles, what makes me feel fulfilled and happy. Its surprising that I really like simplicity—nature, family, friends, art for sure are central for my well being. I love how minimal the separation is between dwelling and nature in Costa Rica. It feels like a reawakening to my natural state—my wild self.

The biggest insights come to me here in Costa Rica. I am forever grateful for this discovery. I am forever grateful for the benevolence of Gaia to make such a gorgeous Eden for me, for you, for all of us to experience, enjoy, play in. My wish for you and me, may every one of us find what brings us deep, divine joy and find a way to live that as often and as honestly as we can.

Twin Medusas Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Twin Medusas : medium: graphite and digital
18″ x 24″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Twin Medusas with Paypal, CLICK HERE

We are so drawn to the pretty blossoms above ground–but what fortifies us from below in the depths–
of our experience, our challenges, our collective unconscious?I also thought about the Greek myth of Medusa.
She was a beautiful maiden in Athena’s temple and all the men in the village were wildly attracted to her ravenous beauty.
But she was a virgin–dedicated to serving Athena–not allowed to embrace her own sexuality.

One terrible day, Medusa was raped by Poseidon, God of the Sea.
Athena was infuriated and blamed Medusa, rather than her perpetrator.
The negative feminine aspect–enraged, Athena shamed Medusa and cast a spell on her–she gave her hair of writhing,
venomous snakes. And to make it worse, Medusa could not look at anyone for if she did, they turned to stone.

Medusa lived a terrible life of solitude–cast away, alone and rejected.
Unable to be witnessed and loved because of her curse, she grew angrier and more bitter as the years went by. Eventually she was slain by Perseus. A tragedy with no healing.

I wonder–what would happen if she had been nurtured by the Positive Feminine? What if she was loved rather than shunned? What happens when we are shamed and brutalized,
and then witnessed in our trauma, loved and surrendering– allowing our shadow to be seen by others?

And what part of ourselves do we shun- cast away and blame for feeling like a victim? Where is each of our own Inner Medusa?
Because this is the projected scapegoat that we disown–it is the bogeymen, the terrorists..those bad people OUT there that we project.
If we owned our shadow and incorporated it–there would be peace.

This is psychic healing. This is owning our feminine empowerment.So, this artwork, “Twin Medusa” is about incorporating the positive feminine. Not just women, but men too–
Learning how to mirror and witness ourselves so that we can become whole, internalized in our locus of control and resilient.

Ophelia Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Ophelia Emergent Psyche: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist
Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Ophelia/Emergent Psyche with Paypal, CLICK HERE

The myth of Ophelia……

Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius and rejected lover
of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet. Ophelia is a symbol
of innocence gone mad. A dutiful daughter, she is manipulated into spying
on Hamlet and must bear his humiliating and brutal remarks. She believes
him to be mad, commenting sadly “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown.”

Having lost Hamlet’s affection, she herself goes mad when her father is killed by
Hamlet. Her mad scene is one of the best known in Western literature.

And the Emergent Psyche…..

This piece, for me, is about internalizing the projected animus– the masculine
and stepping into our own empowerment through internal versus external validation.
(i.e; The perception many women feel that men need to care for them). Ophelia is
abandoned by her lover, Hamlet, as well as her father’s death. All the men have gone,
and she is left in her abandonment, fear and distress.
Ophelia submerges intothe waters (Solutio). Throught htis death, the body is colonized
by the tree of life. At her heart, Ophleia nourishes the tree as it supports both
the moon (the feminine) and the solar arc of time (the masculine).

And in this process of suicide–looking through the Jungian lens of a PSYCHIC death–
in the symbolic sense–to go crazy, strip away the dross, the fear–and surrender to the
fear and depression, give up all hope to arrive at this moment where we find a strength
within we never knew we had. In this process, we forge ourselves into rebirth–resiliency.
As Ophelia emerges from the depths of Solutio (the water, the drowning) and emerges into
her consciousness–her power. And she steps into Coagulatio (Earth) and into her conscious
mind. It is the archetype of the Phoenix–rebirth, awakening to what can’t kill us,
what cannot be destroyed. Another layer to this piece is a Creation Myth. Evolution–from
water, life emerges. In the macro sense–the evolution of all species on earth, as well as our
own micro evolution from single cell, to embryo, fetus, to fully formed human.

In Mayan mythology, the subterranean waters were seen to be the blood of the earth–
much like the sap of trees is the blood of plants.

Fractalpus Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Fractalpus: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame

$73.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Fractalpus with Paypal, CLICK HERE

I have been dreaming of The Octopus. After watching several nature
documentaries, I have been deeply inspired by how intelligent
and magical these creatures are.

The Octopus is symbolic of Purity, Psyche, Motion, Emotion,
Fluidity, Intuition, Creativity, Flexibility. and Intelligence.

I also think of the spiral–the labyruinth with the tentacles
and thus the fractals sprawling in the image

Feminine and masculine balanced. Creation is born from a balance
between expansive freedom and working within an established parameter.
Water perfectly illustrates this balance.

The Octopus moves skillfully in a realm that is in constant motion.
Ever changing, shifting, and wafting in accordance with the pull of the moon,
the Octopus’ depth of mystery is enhanced by its own environmental aura.

Although vastly mobile and quite the traveler, the octopus
is primarily a bottom dweller. In symbolic (totem) terms
this is analogous of being grounded while still having
the ability to exist in the watery world of the psyche.

It reminds us that we may be spiritual and intuitively
gifted; nonetheless we are physical beings and must temper
our psychic gifts with strong foundational grounding.

3 Women Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Three Generations: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 18″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$78.00 plus shipping

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This painting is of the three generations, the child, the maiden and the old woman. It is also symbolic of the three developmental archetypes of the Virgin, the Mother and the Crone. The orchid is a symbol that we bloom and exist on this beautiful earth for such a short moment. We grow and develop or new bud, unfold in momentary splendor, and then wither, to be reabsorbed by the very same mother who gave birth to us.

The Orchid Goddess Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Orchid Goddess: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Orchid Goddess with Paypal, CLICK HERE

She had opened an immense hole in the soft ground, ­which she quickly digs up with her skeleton fingers, and bendi­ng h­er ribs and inclining her white smooth skull, she heaps togeth­er in th­e ab­yss old men and youths, women and children, cold, pale, and stiff, whose lids she silently closes.
“Ah, sighs the dreamer, who sadly and with heavy­ heart sees her accomplish her work, “accursed, accursed be thou, destroyer of beings, detestable and cruel Death, and mayest thou be dominated and desolated by the ever-renewed floods of mortal life!”
The grave-digger has arisen. She turns her face; she is now made of pink and char­ming flesh; her friendly brow is crowned with rosy corals. She bears in her arms fair naked children, who laugh to the sky, and she says softly to the dreamer, while gazing at him with eyes full of joy: ‘I am she who accomplishes without cease and without end the transformation of all. Beneath my fingers the flowers that have become cinders bloom once more, and I am both She whom thou namest Death, and She whom thou namest Life!

Theodore De Banville (Translated by Stuart Merrill) Quoted in : ‘The Soul is Here for its Own Joy’ Ed. Robert Bly

The Shamaness Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Shamaness: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Shamaness with Paypal, CLICK HERE

Gramma’s Garden
by Sunny Strasburg

I awoke this morning with a vivid memory of my Gramma sitting in the kitchen of her little, yellow house looking out of her window as we drove away, waving. I felt my throat get tight and I swallowed my tears.

Now, she resides in a nursing home, 93, unable to speak anything other than slurred mumbles. She seems vaguely content and passive now—so unlike the little firecracker she was only a few years ago. She’s fading away, and I’m mourning her long death. The person I knew is gone, but every once in awhile, there are glimmers of her—but honestly it is a ghost in her place.

We kept her in that little house as long as we could. My mom and her siblings, and I when I was able, worked in shifts, checking in on her everyday—making food and giving her medicine. She loved that house, and even more, she loved her garden.

Words don’t do her justice, probably just like your grandmother. There’s a certain nostalgia for these kinds of connections, that only the glimmer of very personal memories can stir.

She was my sanctuary growing up. On weekends I would stay with her in that tiny, yellow house. The smell of that house—like garlic, marinara and bread comes to me when I evoke the image of her kitchen. She even smelled of garlic and to this day, I associate “garlic breath” with happiness. Warm summers spent swinging under the crab-apple tree, dragging my stick horse around her back yard, picking apples, roasting hot dogs in the fire pit. And of course, her wonderful garden. Big peach and apples trees, and elephant heart plum, vegetables and flowers in every nook and cranny.

Gramma was completely present with me- never occupied with anything other than being totally dedicated to these weekly sleepovers. I can never remember a time she yelled at me, or seemed anything but completely enamored with everything I said or did. This was a wonderful respite from my home life—not that it was bad, but at home, I competed with my charismatic brother for attention from my overworked father and distracted mom.

I would look forward all week to Friday, when we would make our way over to her house. Gramma and I would go on long strolls at sunset to the ice cream store and get vanilla cones dipped in chocolate. We would put on jammies and play cards, or watch Lawrence Welk. At night we would lie in her little bed and she would quietly tell me nursery rhymes—my feet tucked between her skinny legs.

She is a tiny, little Italian woman, but very strong and determined. She loved animals and children, all things in need of extra care and attention. Family was everything to her. She dyed her hair bright red. She was always proud of her shapely legs, which were skinny and tan— bent at the knees. She had strong arms and always pinched me on the face or butt cheeks and called me her “lil’ Dahlin’” She wore short-shorts and heels clear into her 80’s.

Details came back to me this morning too- I remember the way I saw her as a child—those details we notice when our minds are clear and tuned in. I see the two, tiny tear-drop moles on her cheek, the long, deep wrinkles on her face, the bracelets that dug into her arms, the landscape of freckles on her sun-toughened arms, but most of all I remember her eyes…. Light, clear blue eyes—direct and loving—a “kings” to escape to. Always patient, always understanding.

She grew an elaborate garden every year in Utah’s short growing season. She would map it all out, ordering her bulbs and seeds months ahead. She would fixate and obsess about how she would get it all done. In the fall, she had more produce than she could handle and end up canning loads of all kinds of stuff. These gardens grew more and more elaborate in her later years.

As an adult, I would tease her about it—telling her to scale it back. Rolling my eyes at how a hobby garden could became such an obsession. One day I watched in amazement at her fussing over a volunteer tomato plant that had sprouted through a crack in the middle of the driveway. Gramma carefully put a tomato cage around the sprout and made all of us park on the street to be sure not to drive over it.

I’ve been in Costa Rica for the past three weeks and a new understanding about life is revealing itself to me in my ample time for self reflection. Now I see a deeper meaning to Gramma’s garden. The gardens grew more elaborate because for her, it was a celebration of being alive. It was an affirmation that everything is a cycle—there are endings, followed by new beginnings. And this celebration became more and more elaborate as her life began to fade.

I think I realized this today because I have become increasingly aware of the finite quality of life and mine in particular. As my time becomes more and more precious, I love all things nascent and alive. Growing, thriving and new invigorate my soul.

In times of doubt about if there’s an afterlife, or meaning to life, and reflecting on the impermanence of our effect on the world, we have Nature. Wonderful, benevolent Nature, she is constantly unfolding and growing in unending, undulating cycles of syntropy and entropy. The bounty of Mother Earth—constantly growing and producing all things delicious and beautiful. What better obsession for you Gramma, to bring you peace in those golden years?

Here’s to you, Gramma, here’s to your hopefulness and care. You continue to inspire me in my actions. May I be as wise as you in my life journey.

Tentacles Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Tentacles: Sylvia Plath medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

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Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact.
I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike I am not cruel, only truthful –

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles.

I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart.
But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake.
A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her.
She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl,
and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day,
like a terrible fish.

Balam Dancing with Waterflilies 2: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

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VISION QUEST
My hand rests on the cat. He’s warm and purring.

I am dissolving into bubbles of soda…effervescence. A wake dissolves starting outward from the point of my hand and radiates 360 degrees outward. Euphoria, psyche orgasm. My cells dissipate out into my aura. My face dissolves away into ticklish bubbles and the only matter left is my hand. I know when my hand is gone, my journey will begin.

I wait there.

I turn into a shopping cart in a store parking lot. It’s a hot summer day and the air is tinged with a dewy, yellow haze. It’s the 1960’s gauging from the 12 year-old boy I see and his striped shirt. He’s crying. His mother has caramel colored hair styled up into a bouffant and a yellow dress. Her orange-stained lips are pursed as she shuttles him into the store.

I go deeper.

Ah, now here comes the mother ship coasting along. Sometimes they tease you and you must have intention for them to take you in.

I look down at my arm as it dissolves in this world too. Then I notice the bubbles dissipating off of me are actually little sentient beings. They are bugs, plants and mycelium creatures scurrying around in their busy lives.

A voice- my own goddess voice says, “Slow down. You’re always looking ahead and miss all of this. This is transcendence.”

I’m a white translucent grub-sticky humanoid. I stretch and arch my back, my neck grows and my head becomes a long, blind tentacle. I am entombed in earth. An ignorant giant stomps the ground above me, oblivious to my presence.

And then the scene opens up and my vision restores. The scale is awesome. I’m crawling along the bottom of an enormous flower blossom with my sticky feet. The soil and microbes encrust the bottom of the flower like jewels- infinitely complex worlds- a microcosm of the All.

I peel a petal back from the underside of the blossom base. I am reminded of my physical form and it feels like I’m lifting my own upper lip off my teeth. I slip inside.

This is the portal.

Another world opens up into a gorgeous vista- pink and orange sunset and the smell of fecund earth. I see a giant pink and green thistle blossom. Something is bubbling at of the center- something black like oil. Oh, now I see its a baby’s head crowning, birthing itself from the flower. Out she unfolds like a wet butterfly out of a chrysalis. But she is no delicate butterfly. She is the Black Goddess Kali- death and rebirth- made of hard, teak wood. She has six arms and awesomely beautiful.

She stands waist-high in the thistle blossom and her silver eyes scan the scene. Her eyes have a silver iris, the only light on her dark body. She is a black scarab beetle, shiny and hard. Her arms dance as she slowly coils her body around, searching. I duck down. If she sees me, I think I’ll die. Waves of panic engulf me, I feel as though I’m drowning, my head dipping under the water.

“Calm down. Allow her to see you.”

I stand up.

Her eyes look into me, down into my soul. She understands- sees everything that is me- all of it. She is neither malevolent, nor benevolent, but detached. In that instant, I become her. I am the scarab beetle now. I feel my power and infinity. I am no longer attached to death or life. There is no sense of time, only a gentle, eternal flow. No energy is destroyed and yet everything material is constantly changing. It generates, dies, regenerates, hanging on an eternal armature of intention. It is impossible to articulate the gravity of this in words.

I transport from the thistle blossom into a sanctuary- the Elysian healing temple. I lie on a stone slab and two silverfish-beetle women caress me. They have long, iridescent blue beetle wings cascading off of their heads and elf faces. The women gently loosen my hard-black wings from my back- gently, gently lifting them. Underneath is raw flesh- sticky, and wet- my entire back is an open wound.

“This must air out.” They say, “You have no skin under your exoskeleton. This flesh will dry. This will loosen your wings so you may fly.”

I think to myself that I haven’t been healed like this since I was a child with my grandmother. In a single moment, I remember every detail of her care. I am flooded with nostalgia and gratitude. Yes, it was she who saved me.

I exit this world.

Balam Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Balam in Shebalba : medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Balam in Shebalba with Paypal, CLICK HERE

We’re driving along the bucolic pastures, another tight turn in our tiny SUV rental, swerving a huge pothole and barely avoiding a head-on collision with a blue and red truck hauling cows. We swerved around the corner, “Honk-honk!” There are amicable grins on the farmers’ faces inside. We wave.

I love Costa Rica.

The people are so happy here—the Ticos. They are poor, hard-working. In this bucolic paradise, they trod up and down the windy roads in knee-high rubber boots and smile big smiles full of healthy teeth. There’s good health care and free education in Costa Rica. Libraries are sparse, but people aren’t glued to the American-shit –pop-culture spewing out of cable TV either. Ticos are humble but dignified. They come across as earnest and genuine. Women laugh together and walk arm-in-arm. The men approach one another and place a hand on opposite shoulders, genuinely so happy to see one another. Even the stray dogs are happy and not stressed, lying around idly scratching themselves.

I realized something huge about myself today in the most mundane, metaphorical way. This is a discovery that has been niggling me in dreams and synchronicities all year.

As we sped across tiny town after town in search of a hotel in Turrialba, Martin kept inquiring, “Want to stop at this Soda (restaurant) and get something to eat, have a drink?”

“No!” I would say, “Keep going, we’re almost there!”

I have such a resistance to stopping before we reach the destination. The funny thing is, the destination was MADE a destination by ME (based on some random reading and recommendation from a guide book, or a friend). I am absolutely unwilling to stop at some any place! I want the Ultimate Vacation Experience, goddamit!

This is a metaphor for my entire life. Not only THIS life, but MOST of my lifetimes, according to the seven psychics that have affirmed the same narrative.

The theme in my karmic screenplay goes something like this; I am an Outsider to whatever situation I’m born into. I’m part of that 5% of nonconformists that is “blazing the trail”. Which really means, I’ve spent my whole life (and other lifetimes, apparently) looking through the windows from the cold into the diner, where I see a family enjoying dinner over warm candlelight in that embrace of belonging. I want inside, but don’t know how to fit in.

This lifetime went along with the theme. I was born to an Italian/German family in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was the only non-Mormon girl in my neighborhood, At home my mom, ruled, but in my world outside the women were powerless and the patriarch ruled.

Growing up, I was teased, told I was “Going to the devil” and made fun of for wearing make-up. I carried this badge of “Weirdo” proudly into college. Fuck the system! Question authority! I still have a huge authority issue—basically making me unemployable by anyone who has any desire to boss me around.

I have never belonged. Scratch that, I’ve belonged for a moment once or twice. At Burning Man the first time, with my crew at AMO, in graphic design school…brief moments in an ocean of in-between cities. Like the “sodas” on the way to Turrialba, I don’t want to stop, I want to keep going, hold out for “The Juicy” as I call it—the good stuff.

But what if I didn’t hold out for the Ultimate destination? What if I made any old soda on the way to Turrialba the “Ultimate”? What if I stopped at the roadside Soda and discovered something magical? What magic might unfold if I slowed down to really engage with what it was right there on the roadside in the WAY to Turrialba? Instead of constantly searching for the Ultimate, what would it really feel like if I told myself I’ve arrived, already, all-fucking ready…here right now? This is it.

I have to. You see, I’m forty. I don’t know what it was about this year, but this birthday really drove home that I’m going to die sooner that later, and I don’t want to die outside looking in through the windows. I want to be inside, with the family, the fireplace and the love, and the belonging. I want to feel like I was there, in the epicenter, sucking up the Ultimate in ecstatic bliss.

So back to the Ticos of Costa Rica….. I recently read an article on happiness. They studied cultures all over the world and surprisingly found that places like the USA, where consumers were faced with endless options, that people were actually LESS happy directly because they had so many options. So no matter what they chose, it was never the “Ultimate” choice. This Ultimate option to happiness therefore led to unhappiness. Ah—the irony.

Many of the Ticos living in tiny towns have never left Costa Rica. They have limited choices—but they have good health care, gorgeous scenery, perfect temperatures and rich soil. They go to church on Sunday and know that their soul is guaranteed a nice, cozy spot in heaven–which I imagine in their minds isn’t too foreign to what their life on earth was. They are genuinely happy. Not over the top ecstatic, but a persistent, calm sense of belonging and well being pervades here.

Options, options, options.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if I didn’t have so many fucking options if I would be happier. But it’s too late now, because I know better. I could sell everything and move to a tiny town in Turrialba, but now I’m spoiled. Ah, wouldn’t it be so much better with Facebook, and a gym. And GAWD, a Starbuck’s! I’m a dirty spoiled American.

So now I’m faced with this. My life is a 1/3- ½ over (if I’m lucky). I can spend the rest of it looking for the Shangra-La—the Ultimate which I may never arrive to–or I can just pull over—because I’m hungry and tired and get an Imperial Beer and say, “Hell yea!” I could look out at the (pretty amazing) view and make small talk with the waitress about her life experiences and laugh and just be thankful that I get one more day on this amazing, beautiful world. In this self-made Ultimate, I could take in a deep breath and feel really lucky that I’m here, right now…beer in hand in Paradise.

Balam Dance Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Balam Dancing with Waterlilies 2: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Balam Dancing with Waterlilies 2 with Paypal, CLICK HERE

I love this poem of animals as gods….
In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes there were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen–
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.
~Innuit

Lady Xoc & the Vision Serpents Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Balam Dancing with Waterflilies 3: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Balam Dancing with Waterlilies 3 with Paypal, CLICK HERE

Lady Xoc & The Vision Serpents

I have been very interested in
how women were portrauyed in Mayan art and cosmology.

As seen on engravings from Mayan temples, I have painted
The Queen Lady Xoc here performing blood sacrifice.

Lady Xoc is one of the most prominent and probably
politically powerful women in the Maya civilization.
Lady Xoc is shown here performing an important royal rite of blood letting.

By pulling the rope studded with obsidian shards through her tongue,
she causes blood to drip onto paper strips held in a woven basket to be burned as
depicted on Lintel 25. Blood scrolls can be seen on her face.

The queen also wears an elaborate headdress.
There are flower tassels on the main part of the head band
and a mosaic depiction of Tlaloc sprouting quetzal feathers.
Her elaborately carved “huipi” is trimmed with fringe and pearls.

DREAM: 12/20/2010

I’m in my bedroom and look over to see a dead wolf in a dog kennel. I realize to my horror that an alter ego doppelganger of me shot it and brought it home, dragged it through my house and stuffed it in the kennel.

I’m horrified. And now I see its face has been carefully cut away–surgically. There is a red face underneath- smooth, shiny- almost plastic- with holes for eyes and hole for a mouth. Very disturbing image- surreal and creepy.

Then I see it begins to move….The wolf isn’t dead after all. This is dangerous! I’m relieved its alive, but realize this poor, gruesome creature is so maimed that it can’t possibly survive and I’ll need to kill it all over again to prevent its suffering. It feels like a Frankenstein monster–weird, robotic, half wild, half machine.

But the wolf sits calmly and lifts it’s head–paws out in front and proud head held high– posing like a Sphinx. A deep man’s voice emanates from the plastic hole mouth. It tells me something very important, I plead my psyche in the dream to please remember the words….but somehow now I can’t quite remember…….

Inner Witness: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″  digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase Inner Witness, CLICK HERE

Dreams of being chased, pursued–by morphing monsters. All clumsy and slow though–kind of silly and scary at the same time. It started with the eagle–but upon closer inspection, it was someone in a plushy costume with broken, wooden wings hopping around in the back yard coming to get me. Then the swamp creature–huge but blind-clumsy Frankenstein arms and a fish mouth.

I am laughing and scared at the same time–breathless as I ran into an unfinished house (new construction).
I run up the temporary stairs, carrying a baby on my hip and look out of the windows above.

The monsters are an aspect of me as hunter–clumsy and slow.

I look out and see them in the backyard, and laugh at them. This woman with baby on hip is yet another aspect of my psyche–the pursued aspect. She is faster, more agile–even with a baby in tow. The baby is my protected inner child– the innocent, undeveloped self. The chain of life–predator prey-predator. All aspects of my psyche reflected in these symbolic characters.

I look out the window to the east–below is a scene from Burning Man with tons of people–loitering about in the front yard. The cops are waiting at the door below searching everyone for drugs. I check all my pockets and head outside, and slip past them.

Artemis.

The Hunter.

She has been on my mind. The dream is a mirror of my inner process about being a hunter. My new painting is of Artemis listening….breathing and listening.

She isnt depicted capturing her prey and succeeding, however. She is stuck in the endless hunt.

As am I.

Always seeking, pursuing–waiting in anticipation. Its not about getting the thing (money, success, sex, beauty, wisdom). Its the chase. Its the anticipation of it. And fantasy is always better than reality.

When I (finally) arrive, exhausted, famished, at killing the zebra and taking the huge animal down, it turns out to just be a ball of string I’ve been fixating upon. I look to the horizon, for the next conquest (now, suddenly remembering graduating with my Master’s Degree at Pacifica—such a long, arduous journey graduate school had been! As a sat in the audience, in the ceremony, I was dreaming about getting a PhD…..NEXT! No savoring the triumph–not even for a moment).

I’ve been advising myself that life is a procress–not a destination. Life is a verb, a long, winding path that is about traveling along and soaking up the views at each switchback. “Appreciate and learn to be centered and happy with being in a constant state of 70% there.”

Blah…blah…blah. Easy to say–but I feel dead inside when I stay there. I want struggle, stimulation, stress! And I know this is all my shit–my projection of reality. My psyche loves flying in the north–Sublimatio, air–where the fanstasy is always better than the reality.

How does one feel excited, joyous, intrigued, stimulated in happy homeostasis? Maybe that’s the point–its learning to rest and soak up the triumph stage. I dont know how to just CHILL. How do I learn to relish my triumph at the finish line before embarking on the next chase?

Trapeze Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Trapeze by Sunny Strasburg Detail 2

Trapeze/The Bardo: medium: graphite and digital
16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Trapeze/Bardo with Paypal, CLICK HERE

I recently heard a wonderful story from Africa from my friend, Machiel, who grew up near the villages this story is still told.

On the plains of Africa, the lions roam in the open range. For the villagers who live there and walk the well-worn paths between villages, there is the ever-present fear they will be attacked and eaten by the lions who roam the plains. This fear is particularly acute for the villagers when they must travel at night between tribes, where both darkness and the predators reign.

The oral tradition in these African tribes of the plains is when you hear the lion roar, run toward the sound and it will save your life. Hmmm…that doesn’t sound right! Run TOWARD what is the most terrifying, gut-wrenching sound a human could ever hear?!

Yes, you’re assured, run toward your fear.

The reason being is this. African lions hunt in packs. The oldest, biggest lion is also not the strongest—he may still be big and loud, but he is also old and weak. The lions have ingeniously worked out a pack hunting system where the old lion (with the loudest, scariest roar) hides at one end of the field, and the rest of the females, the powerful hunters, are at the other end—hunched down and quiet- their stealth is legendary.

When the prey crossing the field hears that terrifying roar of the old lion, they run AWAY from it, and into the jaws of the hungry lions lying in wait for their dinner.

Face your fears, run toward them. What lies behind is not only your survival, but your greatest triumph. Running toward what you fear most- your deepest, shadow, gives you the chance to do something different, overcome what terrifies you and shine.

That is the Hero’s Journey.

Tantrapus Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Tantrapus: medium: graphite and digital
18″ x 24″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$85.00 plus shipping
To Purchase Tantrapus with Paypal, CLICK HERE

Tantrapus is the second in the Optopus Series
I have been dreaming of The ctopus. I began to wonder what it must
e like to have all those tentacles and what it would feel like
to have the perception of touch with all of them.
Octopus love….hmmm…?

The Octopus is symbolic of Purity, Psyche, Motion, Emotion,
Fluidity, Intuition, Creativity, Flexibility. and Intelligence.

I also think of the spiral–the labyruinth with the tentacles
and thus the fractals sprawling in the image

Feminine and masculine balanced. Creation is born from a balance
between expansive freedom and working within an established parameter.
Water perfectly illustrates this balance.

The octopus moves skillfully in a realm that is in constant motion.
Ever changing, shifting, and wafting in accordance with the pull of the moon,
the octopus’ depth of mystery is enhanced by it own environmental aura.

Although vastly mobile and quite the traveler,
the octopus is primarily a bottom dweller.
In symbolic (totem) terms this is analogous of being grounded
while still having the ability to exist in the watery world of the psyche.

It reminds us that we may be spiritual and intuitively
gifted; nonetheless we are physical beings and must temper
our psychic gifts with strong foundational grounding.

The Oracle: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$73.00 plus shipping

To Purchase The Oracle with Paypal, CLICK HERE

Movie Yoga Detail by Sunny Strasburg

medium: graphite and digital
MOVIE YOGA is Not For Sale

Sunny Strasburg created this cover art for the book, Movie Yoga, by Tav Sparks
Want to be in the movies? You already are! Part the curtain on your own inner epic and walk out of the theater, after any film, a bigger, deeper person than you already are.
Read Movie Yoga and become a “Movie Yogi!”
www.hanfordmead.com

“Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men — above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we connect with a bond of sympathy.

Many times a day I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labor of others, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am receiving.”

Albert Einstein

The Hero's Dream Detail by Sunny Strasburg

The Hero’s Dream: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

This is the cover for my book, The Alchemist’s Path: Navigating & Reclaiming
the Depths of Your Psyche. (to see a video about the book, CLICK HERE)

This image is symbolic of the Hero or Heroine leaving
the safety of the mother’s womb and what is known and familiar–symbolically.
That is, the exodus from Solutio- the water (thus the boat in the river)
and out into the big, wide and unknown world.

The Hero/Heorine embarks on what Joseph Campbell calls, The Hero’s Journey. It is
the path we all take to develop and realize who we are and the meaning of our lives.

In Jungian Psychotherapy, we track the journey from Solutio (Water) into
Calcinatio (fire) where we face the dragon (our fears and shadow)
and forge ourselves into stronger and more resilient people.
It is here where we battle and hopefully, triumph over our inner demons.

Then we enter Sublimatio (air element) where we soar–bask in our
glory and make sense of the journey and life challenges with
a new sense of clarity.

Finally, we return to our tribe–to Coagulatio (earth) element) where we
reintegrate and share our knowledge with the next generation of Heroes.

Each of the elements are depicted in the painting.
The head shape of the cave exit sympbolizes the psyche.

The Evolvers:Isis Detail 1 by Sunny Strasburg

The Evolvers:Isis Detail 2 by Sunny Strasburg

The Evolvers/Isis: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

42″ x 69″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
or select
$390.00 plus shipping

I’ve been painting a lot lately. Inspired by my thesis work
and reading Marie von Franz and Alchemy. This painting began brewing in my
mind when a close friend told me a metaphor of stepping into the unknown before
he embarked on a big adventure. The image was very intriguing to me, and as
I studied and read about more about Jung and alchemy, the idea gathered momentum.

Lots of hidden stuff in this one. We’re on the Hero’s Journey right now.
Good, bad, however our journey turns out, the path it takes us on provides endless
opportunities for growth and moves toward Individuation. As I continued to read about
alchemy and the archetypal symbolism, it was a bigger symbol from the collective
unconscious about the Hero’s Journey and facing the unknown,
letting go of our past and trusting our destiny.

The goddess on the right is knowledge, Isis. She represents evolution
of the psyche, Individuation, and the Promethean myth of Isis attaining
the alchemical recipe for silver. The wolves are the devourers of the dross (ego).
The apple and helix are from Jay Weidner’s research on holographic time,
and also a dual symbol of Eve and the apple of knowledge.
The Homonid on the left is a ghost, the evolution of man, and the move
toward higher mind. Of course the fairies bring the next step to
our hero to ensure his safe passage .

Anthro Mandala Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Anthro Mandala. medium: graphite and digital
30″ x 30” digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$80.00 plus shipping

or select
50″ x 50” digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$250.00 plus shipping

This painting is about Red Tantra.
In tantra, we stare into the partners’ eyes- eye gazing.
And it is here that I am able to let go of my performance anxiety and release into
the moment of love and connection with my lover. The hands with eyes symbolize
that when he touches me, we’re so in tune, that they “see” exactly where to go.
And of course, the yoni with the heart and lotus is that energy opening,
spiraling both inward and outward. The snake tales are
the twin chakti energy flowing in the dyad.

I’ve also taken up a practice of praying to the goddesses Isis and Sekhmet at my altar.
This dream somehow spawned the image.

I had this dream last night:

I’m on Facebook and see a girl’s icon who is parachuting. I decide to contact her and
go parachuting with her (I’ve never done this and it scares me in real life).
She turns out to be a gorgeous supermodel and we become close friends. The next scene,
we go parachutingtogether. I am floating, gliding with my parachute above
Dimple Dell trail. I spiral down, down, down and softly land in the park.

But I’ve landed on a huge bramble, thorn, thicket. The thorns form a subtle
mandala pattern on top. I am unhurt, but crack the side of the bush open with my foot.
I realize to my dismay, that it is a jaguar mom’s den and I may have hurt the cubs.
(In dream reality, jaguar cubs need time inside the thorn thickets to grow,
and then later it’s safe to crack out of the thicket and go out into the world).
I kneel down and reach my hand inside the thicket. I feel the warm fur and everyone
is breathing. They are all safe. From a small opening in the side of the thicket, the mom
jaguar peers benevolently out at me and says, “It’s OK we’re all OK.
It is time to come out anyway.”

The next scene I am running on that same trail with my dog. As I run along the path,
I see up ahead that Sekhmet is hiking with her lioness, walking toward me.
I am afraid her lioness will attack my dog, so I run off into a corral area
to the side which has tall papyrus grass to hide in. But, to my dismay, I see the lioness
has lifted her head and sees us, again with those intense, piercing feline eyes.
She comes galloping toward us with those big, cat paws. But when she gets close to us,
she starts playing with my dog and they roll around and chase each other.

Sekhmet walks up to me. I decide now I don’t want them to leave! So I close
one of the gates to the corral to keep them in, and begin walking toward the other gate
to close it as well.

But Sekhmet says, “No need to close the gates. We’re staying awhile.
” We embrace and she is warm and loving.
I self consciously say, “Oh, sorry I’m all sweaty from running.”
and she looks at me lovingly, benevolently
and replies, “You know I don’t care about those things.”

Map of the Archetypal Psyche Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Archetypal Map of the Psyche. medium: graphite and digital
30″ x 30 ” digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

or select 50″ x 50 ” digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame

$250.00 plus shipping

The map is divided into the Four Realms of Alchemy- beginning
with the four elements: Solutio (Water), Calcinatio (Fire), Sublimatio (Air)
and Coagulatio (Earth). Each element has its own particular psychological
processes, constructive and destructive properties, psychopathology, and deities.

We also symbolically travel through each of these realms as we psychologically
mature in both large and small ways. Whether it’s a short term problem we are
dealing with, or huge periods of psychological growth, both our dream and
our waking reality symbolism reflects each realm and their
borderlands as we make our way through them. Each section of the book
describes the corresponding element in more detail. The elements are neither
intrinsically good nor bad. It is only when they are out of balance that we
fall into their negative aspects. The ultimate goal of individuation is achieving
an integration and harmonic balance of these elements into our lives.

The four elements are always present in different strengths in our psyches.
Usually one is more dominant than another. At different times in life,
we may have passion for work (Calcinatio), or cry and feel depressed
when we lose a loved one (Solutio). This is normal and healthy.
It is when we over-identify with them and thus create imbalance, that they
become problematic. When we are mobile and can easily move from
one element into another, we are in harmony.

As we become more self actualized, or as Jung called it individuated, the elements
balance and contrast with one another in a fluid manner.

Remember, it is not
the destination, but the path that gives our journey meaning.
The process of individuation is the hero’s journey. It is a path which forms a labyrinth,
traveling in concentric circles deeper and deeper within one’s own psyche.
To be self reflective is the most courageous path we can take in life.
This journey involves the perils of releasing one’s ego, withdrawing
our projections and being open to face our greatest challenges and fears.

Conscientia Detail by Sunny Strasburg

16″ x 20″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist
Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

or select
42″ x 65″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist
Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$360.00 plus shipping

Sometimes we hang in that liminal place between dendrite and synapse….the spider monkey jumping from vine to vine…that point that she hangs in the air. Releasing all and not knowing what will happen next.

I was there a few months ago. I know its got when I find myself isolating from friends and eating cereal straight from the box and watching TV. Three things in normal life I never do.

But, I realized (as I’ve done 1000 other times, but forget somehow) that I had to surrender, let go and release to clearing everything out, living with emptiness and unknown and see what comes in. I call it “hunting like a cat”. Once I allowed that emptiness, the clarity came.

Suddenly, in that surrender, my path took a different trajectory. I cleared away most of which was obscuring what I have to do. Now I am happy, creative and prolific, reaching out to friends and lovers….aaaahhhh.. hello Sunny, welcome back!

In difficult times, I channel my libido into creating. The work is what lasts. Below, my favorite poem EVER!

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

~ Miguel De Unamuno ~

(Roots and Wings, edited and translated by Robert Bly)

Pachamama Detail by Sunny Strasburg

24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$70.00 plus shipping

I am standing in the jungle. The air is warm and I notice that even though I’m nude, I’m completely comfortable. I can feel the moist earth on my bare feet and hear the howler monkeys call and birds sing in the trees. “Its so beautiful here”, I say it out loud.

I look down and am extremely surprised (and surprisingly- pleased!) to see that I’m pregnant. My swollen belly is tight and I run my hands over it. Smiling, I realize that the babies within are actually golden frog tadpoles…a precious cargo especially because they’re endangered animals here in the jungles of Costa Rica. They’ve just begun to grow arm and leg buds. I feel them tickle inside as they swim around.

Suddenly the trees rustle about 12 feet in front of me. I look up aghast as a monster comes running out of the jungle on all four legs. Its moving like a giant monitor lizard. As it approaches, I can see she has the head, back and tail of an iguana, but the breasts, legs, tummy and arms of a human woman. She runs up to me and I take a step back in shock at her. I’m not terrified…but rather, surprised at her strangeness.

As she approaches me, she rears up onto her legs and becomes bipedal. She slows to a walk and continues to approach. She moves in the most amazing, snake like way. Any fear I had is replaced by awe. What I remember most clearly were her extremely intent, orange eyes…bird-like and discerning….taking me in, looking me up and down. She reaches toward my belly and places a surprisingly soft, warm hand on me. She caresses my belly and places her other hand gently, but firmly on my shoulder.

I begin to whisper something to her and she shushes me. Not in a patronizing manner, but more to get my attention.

Then, cocking her head to one side to look deeply into my eyes, in a deep voice she says, “Now its time to grow your legs, Woman. The earth wants you to come out of the water and walk here.”

Coagulatio Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Coagulatio: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 30″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

Coagulatio was created during a time of huge transition and pheaval in my life. I had finally succeeded in some endavors of my life, and I was trying to assimilate and accommodate them into my new reality.

According to the Map of The Archetypal Psyche, I was moving from the high soaring heights of Sublimatio back down to the earthiness of Coagulatio. This transition in other times of my life had been challenging, and this transition was no different. I have a difficult time grounding after feeling so successful and high.

This image depicts the stuck feeling I had. The ginger root man is not grounded in Coagulatio, as his roots do not go into the earth and he sits on top of a tree stump. And the bird on his knee doesn’t have wings, unable to fly back into Sublimatio

Otter Girl Detail by Sunny Strasburg

24″ x 33″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

I had finally stepped into a place of feminine empowerment in my relationships,.
This painting was my witnessing of myself.

The Oroborus that surrounds the Goddess, represents the never -ending
cycles of self discovery. This painting contains many
Vesica Pisces symbols-which are symbolic of
the entire Universe–and the beginning of sacred geometry.

The hands hold mudras and the eyes of witnessing.
The fractal eyes are the witnessing of self in the Microcasms and Macrocasms.
It is the Self Awakening as an evolution of the Universe of Itself.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Anubis Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Anubis: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 30″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

Anubis, the Psychopomp on the River Styx.
But this is also the She-Wolf with her twins, Romulus and Remus.

She/He Hermaphrodite is balanced masculine and femine.

She/He is the Sacred Trickster.

She/He travels the liminal space between
gods and mortals,
underworld and material world,
dendrite and synapse.

This painting is about shuttling the unconscious material into the conscious mind.
Becoming lucid about what to leave behind and allow
to die. and what to move consciousness and intention toward.

The imagery is about that mysterious center of the human will which
is neither entirely instinct (animal) nor reason (the alienated mannequins)

Bobbing for Destiny Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Bobbing for Destiny: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 40″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

I’ve been thinking about a client I’ve been working with who has had some challenges with both her and her family’s health and well being.

There is a predominate concept, that I think is reinforced by our western, Puritanical culture that twists the research on quantum physics into a morality system. I don’t think that was what is intended by the predominant research. I recoil at the thought that one might react to the concept that we can manifest anything we desire by thinking when the opposite is our experience, “Well, if bad stuff is happening to me, I deserve it because I brought it to myself and those I love.”

OK, first, consider this. We have 4 BILLION “bits” of information coming into our minds every second! We are only consciously aware of 2,000 of them at any given moment. Our conscious minds use a filtering system to filter and select what information we find is relevant. Based on past experience, we choose to “see” or experience that which resonates with the vibration that we “know” from the past. It makes sense to us.

It is true that we get back what we are vibrating, ABSOLUTELY, every time, without question–but without any “deserving” or “punishment” or “God chooses who wins and who loses” or “bad karma” narratives overlaid upon it.

When we have a series of negative events that happen in childhood–a multi-generational holographic pattern of fear or abuse–we have an uphill battle to turn it around. We resonate what we know–what past experience has given us. So we come to our adult lives of course, we don’t want that pattern of suffering any more, but that is what we vibrate because that has been our experience. we are fearful, we are vigilant, we expect bad stuff to happen and that the Universe is malevolent and “people are out to get me”. Sadly, this is what the Universe brings us. Without judgement, the Universe says, “OK, you feel fear, I will bring you more fear.”

The key, the trick is to become a Sorceress/Sorcerer. We must take a HUGE leap of faith and transcend our past. We must change our filtering system–those 2,000 things we are aware of to pay attention to the other 99% of the magic we’ve been missing!

OK, so HOW? we ask! Fake It Till You Make It! TRUST! We must trick ourselves into cultivating the feeling of having what we want right now to create an opening to shift our consciousness. The tools Demi and I intend teach to our clients– all of the exercises– are designed to assist in that shift of focus

The more we lament about “This isn’t working!” “I’m frustrated!”, the Universe replies, without fail, “Yes, You’re frustrated!”

When we say, “Life is delicious!” “I am rich!” “I am healthy!” and create that feeling in our hearts and souls, the Universe says, “Yes you are!”

Breathing Detail by Sunny Strasburg

Breathing: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 40″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

Rainer Maria Rilke (C. F. MacIntyre, translator)

“The Ninth Elegy”

Duino Elegies

Why, if it’s possible to spend this span
of existence as laurel, a little darker than all
other greens, with little waves on every
leaf-edge (like the smile of a breeze), why, then,
must we be human and, shunning destiny,
long for it?…

Oh, not because happiness,

that over-hasty profit of loss impending, exists.
Not from curiosity, or to practise the heart,
that would also be in the laurel…
but because to be here is much, and the transient Here
seems to need and concern us strangely. Us, the most transient.
Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more.
And we also once, Never again. But this having been
once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
seems irrevocable.

And so we drive ourselves and want to achieve it,
want to hold it in our simple hands,
in the surfeited gaze and in the speechless heart.
want to become it. give it to whom? Rather
keep all forever…but to the other realm,
alas, what can be taken? Not the power of seeing,
learned here so slowly, and nothing that’s happened here.
Nothing. Maybe the suffering? Before all, the heaviness
and long experience of love–unutterable things.
But later, under the stars, what then? They are better untold of.
The wanderer does not bring a handful of earth,
the unutterable, from the mountain slope to the valley,
but a pure word he has learned, the blue
and yellow gentian. Are we here perhaps just to say:
house, bridge, well, gate, jug, fruit tree, window–
at most, column, tower… but to say, understand this, to say it
as the Things themselves never fervently thought to be.
Is it not the hidden cunning of secretive earth
when it urges on the lovers, that everything seems transfigured
in their feelings? Threshold, what is it for two lovers
that they wear away a little of their own older doorstill,
they also, after the many before,
and before those yet coming…lightly?

Here is the time for the unutterable, here, its country.
Speak and acknowledge it. More than ever
the things that we can live by are falling away,
supplanted by an action without symbol.
An action beneath crusts that easily crack, as soon as
the inner working outgrows and otherwise limits itself.
Our heart exists between hammers,
like the tongue between the teeth,
but notwithstanding, the tongue
always remains the praiser.

Praise the world to the angel, not the unutterable world;
you cannot astonish him with your glorious feelings;
in the universe, where he feels more sensitively,
you’re just a beginner. Therefore, show him the simple
thing that is shaped in passing from father to son,
that lives near our hands and eyes as our very own.
Tell him about the Things. He’ll stand amazed, as you stood
beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how blameless and ours;
how even the lamentation of sorrow purely decides
to take form, serves as a thing, or dies
in a thing, and blissfully in the beyond
escapes the violin. And these things that live,
slipping away, understand that you praise them;
transitory themselves, they trust us for rescue,
us, the most transient of all. They wish us to transmute them
in our invisible heart–oh, infinitely into us! Whoever we are.

Earth, isn’t this what you want: invisibly
to arise in us? Is it not your dream
to be some day invisible? Earth! Invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your insistent commission?
Earth, dear one, I will! Oh, believe it needs
not one more of your springtimes to win me over.
One, just one, is already too much for my blood.
From afar I’m utterly determined to be yours.
You were always right and your sacred revelation is the intimate death.
Behold, I’m alive. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows less…surplus of existence
is welling up in my heart.

from Goddess Alchemy: A Dream Journal for more information on the book, click here
Birth Tree: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 30″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist
Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$70.00 plus shipping
or select
42″ x 61.5″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$360.00 plus shipping

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Mother Moon Detail 1 by Sunny Strasburg

Mother Moon Detail 2 by Sunny Strasburg

from Goddess Alchemy: A Dream Journal for more information on the book, click here
Mother Moon: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 40″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$75.00 plus shipping

This particular story is about Mother Moon. This mother had many Divine Children who populated the
green world below her. At night, darkness ruled outside of her luminescence, and space was a vacuum.
It was the blackest, velvety black one can imagine…and completely silent. Her glow meant safety
and life during the nocturnal hours.

When dusk settled in, the night-blooming jasmine opened themselves, releasing a delicious, dewy scent.
The Divine Children would gather beneath Mother Moon and snuggle together, deeply breathing
the heady scent of jasmine. Together they slept and dreamed lucid and creative dreams, full of epic journeys.

Although the children were mostly ignorant to the dark ways of the world, they were aware of one evil
presence in particular. Wherever their mother’s light could not reach- beneath the rocks, around the trees
and in the long shadows, there were hollow, hungry ghosts which lurked in the darkness. These ghosts devoured
any sleepwalking children who haplessly wandered outside of their mother’s moonbeam. Mother Moon’s
lovely, serene face radiated down upon the land as she made her way across the sky following an eternal
circadian cycle. The hungry ghosts could not venture into her light to capture the children, because if they did,
they would dry up and erode into nothing but dust. Because the Divine Children had grown wise to the ways
the ghosts preyed upon them, the hungry ghosts grew even more insatiable and desperate.
Their sticky bodies began to rot and stunk of decaying flesh and death.

In their desperation, the hungry ghosts schemed of new ways to capture the Divine Children, dreaming
of the night they could roam freely in the expansive darkness. One particularly cunning spirit devised
a plan to capture Mother Moon and douse her light.

One night, a group of ghosts gathered up a cloak and a mirror and ventured up into the sky, creeping
up behind Mother Moon along the dark side of her face. One ghost reached his sticky arm around her,
and in a trembling fist, he offered her a mirror carved out of bone and edged with silver. Losing an arm,
having it turned into powder, was a small sacrifice for the luxury of freedom.

Mother Moon caught the mirror just as it fell from a cloud of dust. She brought it to her radiant face, curious.
She had never seen a reflection of herself, and upon seeing her image in the mirror, she was taken aback
by her own beauty. She gazed lovingly at her reflection and momentarily forgot about her children.
In her distraction, the hungry ghosts gathered up the cloak and threw it over Mother Moon.
They tied a knot in the bottom so almost no light could escape.

Her light disappeared under the cloth and all that could be heard were her muffled cries for help.
Thirteen of the hungry ghosts jumped on top of her and wrestled her to the ground. They dug an enormous
pit with their gnarled hands and dragged her down into the tomb. Then they rolled an enormous
granite boulder over the pit and buried Mother Moon alive.

All that remained was the tiniest lip of glowing silver light around the base of the boulder.
Now, even her muffled pleas for help could not be heard.

The world was enveloped by the darkness and the hungry ghosts were unleashed to feast upon the children,
now vulnerable without Mother Moon. Night after night, the children tried to find places to hide, disconnected
from one another and terrified while the ghosts ate them alive. They devoured them with insatiable hunger.

But there was hope. Even in these darkest times, there was one courageous and smart child who
refused to forget. She decided that the only way her people were going to survive would be to gather a search
party and set out to find and rescue Mother Moon. She formed a small tribe and set out for the forest.

After many nights of fruitless searching and near deadly encounters with the hungry ghosts,
the search party decided it was of no use. It was time to surrender. They felt despondent as they turned back
toward their village, knowing full well that there may be not a single child left alive to come home to.
As they trudged along with their eyes to the ground, the smart child kept her head held high.
She knew she must be watchful, for opportunity favors the prepared mind.

Suddenly, she noticed a strange light, a lip of silver radiating around the base of a boulder.
“That must be Mother Moon!” She exclaimed, tugging at the hand of the child next to her.
With a renewed energy and hopefulness, the children pushed the boulder out of the way. Mother Moon threw off
her cloak and leapt from her tomb. She beamed at her children as she rose into the sky. With every stride,
her light increased tenfold. She found her place again among the stars and once again her children
were safe in her loving radiance.

Dream Insects Detail by Sunny Strasburg

from Goddess Alchemy: A Dream Journal for more information on the book, click here 
Dream Insects: medium: graphite and digital
24″ x 40″ digital print on canvas. Signed by the artist. Shipped in tube, ready for stretching on frame
$78.00 plus shipping

The Dream that inspired the painting:
I lie on a stone slab and two silverfish-beetle women caress me.
They have long, iridescent blue beetle wings cascading off of their heads
and elf faces. They gently loosen my hard-black wings from my back-
gently, gently lifting them. What is underneath is raw flesh-
sticky, and wet, an open wound.

“This must air out.” They say, “You have no skin under your exoskeleton.
This flesh will dry so that you can loosen your wings to fly.”

I think to myself that I haven’t been healed like this since I was a child
with my grandmother. In a single moment, I remember every
detail of her care. I am flooded with nostalgia and cry with gratitude.

Yes, it was she who saved me.

from Goddess Alchemy: A Dream Journal for more information on the book, click here
Kali on Wheels: medium: graphite and digital

Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available Contact sunnys@jps.net for pricing

Boddhisattva: medium: graphite and digital
Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available
Contact sunnys@jps.net for  pricing

How do you infuse our passion, life purpose and sacred activism with sustainability?
by Sunny Strasburg, LMFTI

Here is an excerpt from my presentation for week 7 of the Asana segment of our workshop. This is about sustainability as you move ahead with your true life purpose….

How do you infuse our passion, life purpose and sacred activism with sustainability?

The hero’s journey can be a lonely one. Believing in something and forging ahead– through the good times as well as the challenging times, is a sacred endeavor. Abraham Lincoln ran for president 14 times before finally winning the election. Thomas Edison, successful at last, after thousands of attempts, said “We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb”

Manifesting a vision and activating your unique life purpose merges passion with tenacity. Staying with a goal requires using our passion and love for our purpose to fuel its birth into physical reality.

Edison also said, ““The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.” The work, day after day, requires the traveler to appreciate the journey as much as the destination. As we travel along, the story unfolds and we are given little gifts to sustain us along the way. This sacred work requires self-care so that we may sustain ourselves as we tenaciously move along. Some days we may feel we as if are making leaps and bounds toward our goal, other days we must take a step back to take two forward.

When people burn out and lack the skills to sustain themselves, they give up their dreams. Edison lamented, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

How do you self-sustain? Reflecting on facing challenges in the past—what coping skills worked and which ones were less effective? When the going gets tough, how do you take care of yourself to avoid burn out?

What spiritual practice have you cultivated to fortify yourself with a higher power when life is difficult? Have you found a way to express gratitude for abundance in the form of getting what you want, as well as the opportunity to learn from challenge?

Monitoring and checking in with your emotions, as well as how your physical body feels are guidance systems for how connected you are to your life’s purpose. Strong emotions of passion, physical energy and bliss are indications that you are in inspired flow. However, rage, addiction, hate, physical exhaustion, aches, pains, sadness and depression are signaling you that you have veered off course. You must then re-calibrate your trajectory and get back on-course.

Take care of this one, unique beautiful and amazing YOU! You are the one and only vessel for a sacred gift that the world desperately needs right now. Love and honor this path.

from Goddess Alchemy: A Dream Journal for more information on the book, click here
Stone Goddesses: medium: graphite and digital
Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available
Contact sunnys@jps.net for pricing

The Dream that inspired the image:
I am standing in the jungle. The air is warm and I notice that even though I’m nude,
I’m completely comfortable. I can feel the moist earth on my bare feet and hear
the howler monkeys call and birds sing in the trees. “Its so beautiful here”, I say it out loud.

I look down and am extremely surprised (and surprisingly- pleased!) to see that
I’m pregnant. My swollen belly is tight and I run my hands over it. Smiling,
I realize that the babies within are actually golden frog tadpoles…a precious cargo
especially because they’re endangered animals here in the jungles of Costa Rica.
They’ve just begun to grow arm and leg buds. I feel them tickle inside as they swim around.

Suddenly the trees rustle about 12 feet in front of me. I look up aghast as a monster comes
running out of the jungle on all four legs. Its moving like a giant monitor lizard.
As it approaches, I can see she has the head, back and tail of an iguana,
but the breasts, legs, tummy and arms of a human woman. She runs up to me
and I take a step back in shock at her. I’m not terrified…but rather,
surprised at her strangeness.

As she approaches me, she rears up onto her legs and becomes bipedal. She slows
to a walk and continues to approach. She moves in the most amazing, snake like way.
Any fear I had is replaced by awe. What I remember most clearly
were her extremely intent, orange eyes…bird-like and discerning….taking me in,
looking me up and down. She reaches toward my belly and places a surprisingly soft,
warm hand on me. She caresses my belly and places her other hand gently,
but firmly on my shoulder.

I begin to whisper something to her and she shushes me. Not in a patronizing manner,
but more to get my attention.
Then, cocking her head to one side to look deeply into my eyes, in a deep voice
she says, “Now its time to grow your legs, Woman.
The earth wants you to come out of the water and walk here.”

She grows into an immnse, immense goddess and steps out of the water. I become tiny
and wash up onto her leg as she carries me ashore.

from Worry Wort
Attack!: medium: graphite and digital
Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available
Contact sunnys@jps.net for pricing

This piece was created for the children’s book, “Worry Wort”. Here BB Rawhead is being attacked by Myrna.

from Worry Wort
Sminks: medium: graphite and digital
Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available
Contact sunnys@jps.net for pricing

This piece was created for the children’s book, “Worry Wort”. Here Angie is learning witchcraft at the Sminks School.

from Worry Wort
B.B. Rawhead: medium: graphite and digital
Various sizes printed on canvas and paper available
Contact sunnys@jps.net for pricing

This piece was created for the children’s book, “Worry Wort”.Here BB Rawhead emerges from the forest behind the campfire and gicves Myrna and Angie a fright.