ALCHEMY: Re-Mything The Land
The Art of Merrilyn Duzy
Merrilyn Duzy is from Southern California, and has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Otis Art Institute. Her artistic career has spanned a broad spectrum, and her work demonstrates a need throughout to seek out and rediscover what has been hidden: and to reveal it to those who take the time to look deeply. In our Interview she speaks of a force that is made visible in the "Mythos of the Land", and especially is found in the often hidden Mythos of women. What, she asks, is the feminine vision? Where is it to be found in art, in spirituality, in the erotic and sacred? What, after all, do we know about the Divine Feminine, overwhelmed and erased for thousands of years by Patriarchal cultures and mythologies?
In 1986 Duzy produced a series of paintings called “Women Artists in History” which were shown at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida – the series of paintings, which she began in 1982, were, like the work of Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”, an homage to women forgotten or erased by the dominant masculine tradition of art history. Additionally, Duzy presented as part of her ongoing project a series of lectures on the subject of women in the arts, past and present, at various museums and academic venues.
Duzy has also explored the once taboo subject of female eroticism, some of which have been exhibited at the International Museum of Erotic Art in San Francisco and elsewhere. Duzy found a great deal of inspiration through her research into creation myths of ancient and tribal cultures, wherein a Mother Goddess is often the ultimate source of creation. In 1986 she showed a group of collages, titled “the Goddess Rediscovered” in Tel Aviv, Israel. The work this Interview is founded upon was her then current collection of paintings she called “The Creation Series” which explore the alchemical relationship between Heaven and Earth – the “star stuff” of which we are all formed, resident in all life and form, and made manifest right here, within the living Earth.
The Art of Merrilyn Duzy
Merrilyn Duzy is from Southern California, and has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Otis Art Institute. Her artistic career has spanned a broad spectrum, and her work demonstrates a need throughout to seek out and rediscover what has been hidden: and to reveal it to those who take the time to look deeply. In our Interview she speaks of a force that is made visible in the "Mythos of the Land", and especially is found in the often hidden Mythos of women. What, she asks, is the feminine vision? Where is it to be found in art, in spirituality, in the erotic and sacred? What, after all, do we know about the Divine Feminine, overwhelmed and erased for thousands of years by Patriarchal cultures and mythologies?
In 1986 Duzy produced a series of paintings called “Women Artists in History” which were shown at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida – the series of paintings, which she began in 1982, were, like the work of Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”, an homage to women forgotten or erased by the dominant masculine tradition of art history. Additionally, Duzy presented as part of her ongoing project a series of lectures on the subject of women in the arts, past and present, at various museums and academic venues.
Duzy has also explored the once taboo subject of female eroticism, some of which have been exhibited at the International Museum of Erotic Art in San Francisco and elsewhere. Duzy found a great deal of inspiration through her research into creation myths of ancient and tribal cultures, wherein a Mother Goddess is often the ultimate source of creation. In 1986 she showed a group of collages, titled “the Goddess Rediscovered” in Tel Aviv, Israel. The work this Interview is founded upon was her then current collection of paintings she called “The Creation Series” which explore the alchemical relationship between Heaven and Earth – the “star stuff” of which we are all formed, resident in all life and form, and made manifest right here, within the living Earth.
INTERVIEW WITH MARRILYN DUZY
Los Angeles, California
June 13, 1988
MD: Astronomy is my favorite science – I’ve always been enchanted by the stars. I once had the good fortune to go to Frazier Park, California, which has a high altitude, with a group of amateur astronomers. They brought enormous telescopes, and I was able to see the Pleiades, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons; I even got to see Andromeda! I actually saw another galaxy! And when I was out there looking at the stars, I thought “that’s gas and fire, it’s awesome…..and so what. I’m made of the same stuff.” As Carl Sagan said, we’re all made of the same star stuff. We’re all connected to the stars, as well as to the rocks, the land, the ocean, and to each other. So in a sense, I’m painting our source, our celestial, essential birthplace.
I was experimenting at that time with dry pigments in a painting I called “The Cosmos.” I would flick the pigment off the edge of my palette knife, and because it was dry, a breeze would carry it any which way. There I was tossing this shiny dust out, onto a canvas, and I felt like I was creating a universe in the process. Yet the shapes and patterns were also very random. It was a marvelous metaphor, and I thought about the way we are essentially generated by gases coalescing randomly in space.
In a painting called “Back of Beyond” I was thinking about something to do with a doorway, an opening into space. As a painting called “When the Morning Stars Sing Together” evolved, I looked for some figure or shape to join with the ambiguity of the dust technique I was using. I had been reading about Goddesses and creation myths, and found the Goddess was often associated with the sky. Once, female deities were revered as the Source; and I was interested in that affirmation of woman as creator.
As I did studies in my effort to integrate a female presence, I even used my own figure, attempting to marry it with this ambiguous painting technique I had discovered. I had a photographer photograph me in all kinds of positions, as if I were hurling through space! Eventually, however, I became frustrated with that. The paintings evolved with the root presence of the female figure, but not so literally. In “Rho Ophiuchus” there is a cosmic volcanic vagina-like image, spewing forth fire and heat, which then become the stars. “Rho Ophiuchus” is a term from an astronomy book - in Latin it means “Mother to Newborn Stars.” “Night Canyon” is also meant to suggest a landscape infused with Eros, and that was influenced by the image of the creation of “newborn stars.” “Night canyon” is an erotic landscape, meant to suggest the sacred marriage between the Earth and the Sky. There are thrusting canyon walls, red, like flesh or blood, going up to meet the sky. The sky forms a phallic shape coming down, which can also be seen as deep space, a creative portal to something beyond this sphere.
“Stone mountain” was my first attempt with a palette knife. You can see a male and female form hidden in that mountain landscape, animating it. They’re embracing, but it’s subtle, you have to look closely to see them within the rocks. This furthers the idea of the earth peopled by great, mysterious creatures, by an Anima and Animus in creative interplay. The landscape, animated by a living mythos just beneath the surface. Their union is the marriage between the natural world and the metaphysical world.
Many of these hidden images come to the viewer only by looking at the work over a period of time – I want the viewer to do multiple takes. They can see the work as shape, color, and form, or as landscape, and they may get a sense of Eros in the painting as well, because sensuality is very much an aspect of creation myths. And they may glimpse the “personae” inherent in the landscape as well. In our “primitive brains” we respond to things instinctively and spontaneously, with a childlike purity. I would like to bypass that censoring, social adult brain: I’d like people to feel the work somewhere between their chests and their genitals. If that happened, I would feel I succeeded as an artist. I’m not an intellectual artist, greatly seeking theory or structure. I would prefer to hear someone say in response to my work, “I feel that.”
LR: What creation myths were you thinking of?
MD: I’ve read all kinds of creation myths from different cultures and times. They seem to overlap, they are interwoven. I wasn’t pinpointing any particular one. The Earth is often referred to as Mother Earth. There are many native traditional stories of re-entering the womb, re-entering the Earth. So my painting “Trumelback passage” is an entry back into the Creator, into the Mother source. The painting comes from a slide I took in my travels. The vaginal shape is exactly the way the mountain itself was shaped as the glacier retreated in Trumelback, Switzerland, where I visited. There was a marvelous, layered effect in the stone, and it looked to me like some mysterious female shape, her flesh…..and it occurred to me that was what we all are as well. Stone, flesh, the earth, and also star stuff. So this became a metaphor for the passageway in.
LR: You’ve painted a passageway into a vast distance, beyond the planet, and at the same time, a passageway into the earth.
MD: Yes, because if you go far enough into one, you come back into the other.
LR: how did the painting “Al Khemi” come about?
MD: I have a deep respect and profound awe for the land. Land is what people fight and die for so they can sustain themselves. And people, like all animals, also find a deep sense of belonging and adaptation to different lands.
When I’m driving through the San Joaquin valley here in California, I see this rich farmland, and I think “that’s what it’s all about, without that we’re nothing.” I visited Egypt a few years back, and I was astonished by the barrenness of the desert there. Yet wherever the Nile goes there is this rich, loamy soil with a wonderful verdant, green growth. The sand just touches it, with no transition, not a fence or a yard. The desert there truly vanquishes all life, and one deeply realizes the value and sanctity of the Land.
“Alchemy” of course is the idea of bringing elements together to make something new – coal into gold, desert into farmland. The soil, when it’s nurtured with water and seed, creates something new. I came across two words in Arabic: “Al” which is “the” and “Khemi” which is “land.” Al Khemi, the land. That title came about 8 months before the painting was actually executed. It began with an image that flashed into my mind, an image of furrowed fields at sunset. I heightened the colors to give the feeling of the sun caressing the tops of the mounds of the furrows, to show the sun as being a catalyst to the alchemic qualities of the soil, of the earth.
LR: You told me that you are interested in transforming creation myths into something useful to us today. Why do you think they may be useful?
MD: There is a human impulse that makes us want to feel a connection to something beyond ourselves. No matter how sophisticated we may get, or imbued with scientific explanations, life is still so utterly mysterious and magical! Without having some purpose or meaning beyond ourselves, beyond the limits of our time on this Earth, we have nothing. As artists we can give voice to the time we lived here, speaking from our own perspectives, from our unique viewpoints.
One of my favorite television programs, of course, was Cosmos with Carl Sagan. One night while watching it I was struck by the thought “right, that’s it!” We’re all made of star stuff, we’re all the result of cooling gases that have formed stars and planets. A planet revolves around the sun, light, and heat act upon that planet, that Earth, and after a while there is a crucible that occurs for life to form. And life becomes more sophisticated until finally it becomes conscious. As we evolve we reach back out into space. That’s the cycle I envision. We’re going back to our Source, to be accepted back into the light that is the Creator.
But that’s what we already are, and yet without awareness, we would not know it. It’s about re-membering. That’s why I tell people “well, I’m God! And you’re god!” We’re all part of each other.
Copyright Lauren Raine MFA and Merrilyn Duzy MA (1989, 2024)
Los Angeles, California
June 13, 1988
MD: Astronomy is my favorite science – I’ve always been enchanted by the stars. I once had the good fortune to go to Frazier Park, California, which has a high altitude, with a group of amateur astronomers. They brought enormous telescopes, and I was able to see the Pleiades, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons; I even got to see Andromeda! I actually saw another galaxy! And when I was out there looking at the stars, I thought “that’s gas and fire, it’s awesome…..and so what. I’m made of the same stuff.” As Carl Sagan said, we’re all made of the same star stuff. We’re all connected to the stars, as well as to the rocks, the land, the ocean, and to each other. So in a sense, I’m painting our source, our celestial, essential birthplace.
I was experimenting at that time with dry pigments in a painting I called “The Cosmos.” I would flick the pigment off the edge of my palette knife, and because it was dry, a breeze would carry it any which way. There I was tossing this shiny dust out, onto a canvas, and I felt like I was creating a universe in the process. Yet the shapes and patterns were also very random. It was a marvelous metaphor, and I thought about the way we are essentially generated by gases coalescing randomly in space.
In a painting called “Back of Beyond” I was thinking about something to do with a doorway, an opening into space. As a painting called “When the Morning Stars Sing Together” evolved, I looked for some figure or shape to join with the ambiguity of the dust technique I was using. I had been reading about Goddesses and creation myths, and found the Goddess was often associated with the sky. Once, female deities were revered as the Source; and I was interested in that affirmation of woman as creator.
As I did studies in my effort to integrate a female presence, I even used my own figure, attempting to marry it with this ambiguous painting technique I had discovered. I had a photographer photograph me in all kinds of positions, as if I were hurling through space! Eventually, however, I became frustrated with that. The paintings evolved with the root presence of the female figure, but not so literally. In “Rho Ophiuchus” there is a cosmic volcanic vagina-like image, spewing forth fire and heat, which then become the stars. “Rho Ophiuchus” is a term from an astronomy book - in Latin it means “Mother to Newborn Stars.” “Night Canyon” is also meant to suggest a landscape infused with Eros, and that was influenced by the image of the creation of “newborn stars.” “Night canyon” is an erotic landscape, meant to suggest the sacred marriage between the Earth and the Sky. There are thrusting canyon walls, red, like flesh or blood, going up to meet the sky. The sky forms a phallic shape coming down, which can also be seen as deep space, a creative portal to something beyond this sphere.
“Stone mountain” was my first attempt with a palette knife. You can see a male and female form hidden in that mountain landscape, animating it. They’re embracing, but it’s subtle, you have to look closely to see them within the rocks. This furthers the idea of the earth peopled by great, mysterious creatures, by an Anima and Animus in creative interplay. The landscape, animated by a living mythos just beneath the surface. Their union is the marriage between the natural world and the metaphysical world.
Many of these hidden images come to the viewer only by looking at the work over a period of time – I want the viewer to do multiple takes. They can see the work as shape, color, and form, or as landscape, and they may get a sense of Eros in the painting as well, because sensuality is very much an aspect of creation myths. And they may glimpse the “personae” inherent in the landscape as well. In our “primitive brains” we respond to things instinctively and spontaneously, with a childlike purity. I would like to bypass that censoring, social adult brain: I’d like people to feel the work somewhere between their chests and their genitals. If that happened, I would feel I succeeded as an artist. I’m not an intellectual artist, greatly seeking theory or structure. I would prefer to hear someone say in response to my work, “I feel that.”
LR: What creation myths were you thinking of?
MD: I’ve read all kinds of creation myths from different cultures and times. They seem to overlap, they are interwoven. I wasn’t pinpointing any particular one. The Earth is often referred to as Mother Earth. There are many native traditional stories of re-entering the womb, re-entering the Earth. So my painting “Trumelback passage” is an entry back into the Creator, into the Mother source. The painting comes from a slide I took in my travels. The vaginal shape is exactly the way the mountain itself was shaped as the glacier retreated in Trumelback, Switzerland, where I visited. There was a marvelous, layered effect in the stone, and it looked to me like some mysterious female shape, her flesh…..and it occurred to me that was what we all are as well. Stone, flesh, the earth, and also star stuff. So this became a metaphor for the passageway in.
LR: You’ve painted a passageway into a vast distance, beyond the planet, and at the same time, a passageway into the earth.
MD: Yes, because if you go far enough into one, you come back into the other.
LR: how did the painting “Al Khemi” come about?
MD: I have a deep respect and profound awe for the land. Land is what people fight and die for so they can sustain themselves. And people, like all animals, also find a deep sense of belonging and adaptation to different lands.
When I’m driving through the San Joaquin valley here in California, I see this rich farmland, and I think “that’s what it’s all about, without that we’re nothing.” I visited Egypt a few years back, and I was astonished by the barrenness of the desert there. Yet wherever the Nile goes there is this rich, loamy soil with a wonderful verdant, green growth. The sand just touches it, with no transition, not a fence or a yard. The desert there truly vanquishes all life, and one deeply realizes the value and sanctity of the Land.
“Alchemy” of course is the idea of bringing elements together to make something new – coal into gold, desert into farmland. The soil, when it’s nurtured with water and seed, creates something new. I came across two words in Arabic: “Al” which is “the” and “Khemi” which is “land.” Al Khemi, the land. That title came about 8 months before the painting was actually executed. It began with an image that flashed into my mind, an image of furrowed fields at sunset. I heightened the colors to give the feeling of the sun caressing the tops of the mounds of the furrows, to show the sun as being a catalyst to the alchemic qualities of the soil, of the earth.
LR: You told me that you are interested in transforming creation myths into something useful to us today. Why do you think they may be useful?
MD: There is a human impulse that makes us want to feel a connection to something beyond ourselves. No matter how sophisticated we may get, or imbued with scientific explanations, life is still so utterly mysterious and magical! Without having some purpose or meaning beyond ourselves, beyond the limits of our time on this Earth, we have nothing. As artists we can give voice to the time we lived here, speaking from our own perspectives, from our unique viewpoints.
One of my favorite television programs, of course, was Cosmos with Carl Sagan. One night while watching it I was struck by the thought “right, that’s it!” We’re all made of star stuff, we’re all the result of cooling gases that have formed stars and planets. A planet revolves around the sun, light, and heat act upon that planet, that Earth, and after a while there is a crucible that occurs for life to form. And life becomes more sophisticated until finally it becomes conscious. As we evolve we reach back out into space. That’s the cycle I envision. We’re going back to our Source, to be accepted back into the light that is the Creator.
But that’s what we already are, and yet without awareness, we would not know it. It’s about re-membering. That’s why I tell people “well, I’m God! And you’re god!” We’re all part of each other.
Copyright Lauren Raine MFA and Merrilyn Duzy MA (1989, 2024)
