Dodi King
Fortune Teller No. 1, 2021
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 cm
Copyright The Artist
£ 3,450.00
'This work was initially developed from an intention to explore the body as a map for psychic awareness. I considered the practice of palm reading, spiritual deities and psychedelic vision,...
"This work was initially developed from an intention to explore the body as a map for psychic
awareness. I considered the practice of palm reading, spiritual deities and psychedelic vision, by
which the body becomes a malleable object in a state of balanced transformation with the
capacity to carry downloads of ancestral and cosmic memory and information.
In the painting, the female form serves as a symbol for both the Divine Feminine and the
essence of light that gives structure to bodily being. The red of the figures’ eyes and the bloody
spillage from their breasts references mortality and animalistic impulse while the soft blue of
their forms is suggestive of a higher spiritual aura that thematically connects the cosmic
symbolism of the moon and stars around a central existential narrative. Another reference
includes the head of an ankh within the looped shape of the central braid, further embedding the
composition with ideas of higher consciousness and mystic visual communication.
With this piece, I’m interested in pushing the ideological limitations of the female form that have
been widely enforced throughout Western culture. I’m experimenting with the ways in which we
can expand our perception of the body to transform our relationship with corporeality and
generate new opportunities for cultivating a more harmonious human experience, given the
wisdom from ancient societies that was largely erased as a result of colonization.
This work honors the innate duality of humanity regarding both the physical, animal state of
being as well as our potential for spiritual transcendence. It is a multifaceted celebration of
feminine sexuality, eroticism, and creationism.
'Fortune Teller No. 1' is the first piece in the Fortune Teller Series, an ongoing project in
self-portraiture that began with the intention to more deeply explore the figure as a site of
symbolic representation and projection of internal (mental, emotional, spiritual) processes. The
proceeding works in this series place special emphasis on the figure as a means of
communicating the powerfully remedial tool of the imagination in facilitating enhanced self
perception and catharsis."
awareness. I considered the practice of palm reading, spiritual deities and psychedelic vision, by
which the body becomes a malleable object in a state of balanced transformation with the
capacity to carry downloads of ancestral and cosmic memory and information.
In the painting, the female form serves as a symbol for both the Divine Feminine and the
essence of light that gives structure to bodily being. The red of the figures’ eyes and the bloody
spillage from their breasts references mortality and animalistic impulse while the soft blue of
their forms is suggestive of a higher spiritual aura that thematically connects the cosmic
symbolism of the moon and stars around a central existential narrative. Another reference
includes the head of an ankh within the looped shape of the central braid, further embedding the
composition with ideas of higher consciousness and mystic visual communication.
With this piece, I’m interested in pushing the ideological limitations of the female form that have
been widely enforced throughout Western culture. I’m experimenting with the ways in which we
can expand our perception of the body to transform our relationship with corporeality and
generate new opportunities for cultivating a more harmonious human experience, given the
wisdom from ancient societies that was largely erased as a result of colonization.
This work honors the innate duality of humanity regarding both the physical, animal state of
being as well as our potential for spiritual transcendence. It is a multifaceted celebration of
feminine sexuality, eroticism, and creationism.
'Fortune Teller No. 1' is the first piece in the Fortune Teller Series, an ongoing project in
self-portraiture that began with the intention to more deeply explore the figure as a site of
symbolic representation and projection of internal (mental, emotional, spiritual) processes. The
proceeding works in this series place special emphasis on the figure as a means of
communicating the powerfully remedial tool of the imagination in facilitating enhanced self
perception and catharsis."