A Smithy

The one who returns to earth having approached the light is not the one who began the journey to the light.

Statement

You’re probably familiar with the Greek myth of Icarus and his father Daedalus, who was the architect of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was imprisoned. Briefly, father and son were exiled, and to escape their fate Daedalus fashioned wings for them both, of feathers, wax, and yarn. They jumped, then flew. Deadalus warned his son not to fly to close to the sun lest the wax melt, the wings be ruined, and he plummet into the sea, but the joy of flight captivated Icarus who, ignoring his father’s warning against ascent, fell to his death.

This myth like so many others can be interpreted through the lens of metaphysics; it is such a stark warning to humanity not to transcend what is permitted, known, and sanctioned by the smaller scope of human consciousness. The warning is clear in the story: humanity is absolutely not to grow in consciousness, not know who we are, and if we even begin to explore this we won’t simply fail, but perish.

What if the myth of Icarus and his demise were reconsidered? What if Icarus, understood here to be the representation of human consciousness in its first iteration, could succeed in his ascent? What if his flight toward the sun could symbolize transcendence of human consciousness as we know it, which means moving beyond the wheel of fortune, or what St Paul described in 1 Corinthians 2:14 as ‘the natural man,’ or George Herbert characterized as the one being ‘guiltie of duste and sinne’ in his timeless poem Love (III)?

Could Icarus ascend without peril and become a new signpost for humanity, granting us permission after all these millennia to know ourselves on a different, more expansive level? Individuals have done this throughout history, sometimes in unrecognized ways, and sometimes in ways that have led to their banishment or death. Perhaps the time has come to reimagine a figure like Icarus, who longed for freedom, as one who is granted a different fruit than what we were told in the original story. Perhaps our curiosity about transcending first generation human consciousness will no longer lead us to our demise but to a higher outcome for all.

In the painting, the figure of Icarus is quoted from the first known depiction of the myth (see below). The size of the panel is the same proportion as this initial image, and the thin border is maintained on the upper and right side. The figure of Icarus himself is depicted twice, the first copied from the fresco with cracks of plaster visible, then secondly, he is duplicated in the upper right, transcending the bounds of the fresco that stand as the metaphorical idea of self, cracks healed, where a brightness reflects from the reaching wing. The wall of the fresco and the wall of a sitting room compress the space in the middle of the image. This space holds movement, weight, and familiar symbols of ascension— wind filled sails, a bird as it takes off in flight, and wings both stylized and quoted. Heavy slices of wood, almost fleshy in the middle, are evidence of trials and failures that have piled up and fallen upon one another; they begin to slide into a small area of water. Two mirrored tables reflect different realities above, the first showing the ceiling of a room beyond which one cannot ascend, in a reality that is still operative. The second table however reflects Icarus from the point of view of a vast blue sky, wax wings intact, in no danger of falling.

smithy, n. The workshop of a smith or blacksmith; a forge. Formerly also: †a portable forge (obsolete). Also figurative.

smithy, v. transitive. To make or form by smithing; to forge, smith. Also (now chiefly) figurative.

“I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” James Joyce, A Portrait of Artist as a Young Man, 1916

Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.oed.com, 2023

A Smithy, 26” x 18”, 2010-2023, was painted in oil and egg tempera with hand-refined linseed oil on glue-chalk gesso and glue size on cradled hardboard.