An Exposition by the Artist:

This painting represents the Australian Swallowtail Butterfly. The painting signifies Aboriginal Australian culture from the painter’s point of view and is timeless, spiritual in focus, and universal. As such, the work includes but also transcends past, present, and future, utilising contemporary and traditional knowledge of painting techniques including line and dot painting, or pointism.

The work was created to honour my Ancestors, extended family, and to embrace the new Australia. It represents opening up to healing and transformation from the past traumatic events and trans-generational trauma that have shaped my family and the culture of Australia.

Butterfly Awakening is today’s dreaming of reunion and celebration of cultural diversity and creativity. Butterfly awakening is a representation of waking from past dreaming into present healing, honouring our history and our society today. The work reflects a sense of opening to the currents of change, and to what is now a global community where each of us can extend our spiritual and natural wings and be open to who we are. The healing suggested is personal, social, and systemic, because the Butterfly awakens within an ecosystem that needs to be in balance in order to sustain life. So we fully embrace all the parts of our lives including culture, spirit, body, soul, and mind.

The painting highlights the fact that butterflies are one of a few creatures that experience a physical metamorphosis. They transform into the fullness that they were created to be. We too can experience metamorphosis. The image asks the viewer to consider in what ways can we change and transform our lives?

The use of colour and form suggests that points of awareness come and go through life, and that pathways open up over time. We are able to be like the awakening butterfly when we make small but significant life altering decisions to modify our mindset, behaviour, beliefs, and/or our spiritual awareness. Like the symbol suggests, when we believe that all things are possible we can rise up on wings of transformation.

Editor’s Note:

The logo of cphJournal is adapted via a digital photograph of the original artwork, and is gratefully used by cphJournal as our emblem of hope, healing, and transformation. The image is copyright © Dwayne Wyndier Kennedy and is used by permission of the artist, and is not to be copied or reproduced without written permission from the artist, expect where copies of the journal are made for educational and/or research purposes as determined by the needs of cphJournal.

Rev Kennedy sells his works and can be contacted at cphJournal.