She The Flowering of Ishtar Painting

She the Flowering of Ishtar, Ishtar Painting

Ishtar Painting. She The Flowering Of Ishtar, oil on canvas, 36 inches by 72 inches, completed in 2012

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My Ishtar painting depicts the return of the goddess from the underworld through the intervention of Enki.

At the bottom of the picture is Ereshkigal in her domain the underworld, with her nightside companions.  On the right is Dumuzi Ishtar’s consort who walks into oblivion, the price for her return to life.

Damuzi is representative of the male condemned to a dark colorless underworld because he fails to recognize and express his feminine aspects. Illustrated symbolically through his cowardice in not assisting the Goddess to return from the underworld.

Ishtar herself is the central figure with her totem animal the lioness.  Freed from the underworld and empowered by it she returns to her realm.

The background of the painting is Enki, the light which brings release.