Myra has
always been attracted to classic designs as they might be used in a
villa or country house, lending the feel of cultural age and quality to
the viewer. Her process requires a study of classic design,
planning and experimentation. These are tile patterns that will add
charm and quality to your home designs.
Myra
studied a number of art forms as a student of Fine Arts at
Laverne State College in Los Angeles County, California. Long ago, she settled
into painting designs on various media. Then, after living in Europe for
two years, studying traditional designs,
she has settled solidly into ceramic tile painting.
She is always hunting down interesting traditional patterns to work into
interesting painted tile sets.
Husband Mark came up with a very solid, furniture like oak frame design
for housing the tile sets as hanging art.
She uses traditional European
patterns or inspirations mixing European and Middle-Eastern (Byzantine)
influences. Her mermaid series is one of her latest artisitic
binges. The Tarot cards are a specialty. Based on the
traditional deck as conceived by Arthur Edward Waite we think it is the
most interesting of all Tarot deck designs.
Myra paints the tiles and husband
Mark builds a solid, oak frame
Although thought of as a fortune
teller's tool, the deck has its origin with none other than the Knight's
Templar, who used them as visual instruction rather than written words. |
|
This helped keep secrets
and instruct otherwise illiterate recruits. The Templars committed
text to memory - a well known fact. This method seems to have been learned
from the Saracens who used picture cards to teach. Ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs as another example of the use of pictures for
instruction in religious/mystical initiation.
After the suppression of the Templars, the deck was declared
heretical by the church. It is a long and erroneous perversion of
justice that has melded the Tarot deck with Christian ideas of a
Satanic or evil association. The Orthodox Church never
explicitly forbade the Tarot, so the stereotypical "Gypsy" fortune
tellers usually from Romania eventually influenced this erroneous use in
Western Europe. But the cards could not be eliminated in any
case, so a safe deck, the one many Christians would use today for a safe
game of "Hearts" or "Bridge" are only a modified Tarot deck.
However, we admit that the Tarot
deck does not fit into the dogma of the Vatican or Roman Catholic
Church. The deck is full of Kabalic symbolism as well as early and,
pre-Christian symbols. But this was not that unusual during the
time of the deck's origin and the influence of Judaism in the Templar's
and later the Freemasonic brotherhood is undeniable regardless of
simultaneous anti-Semitic practices by those very same organizations
early on. We think that the true esoteric history and mysticism of
the West is contained within the symbology of the Tarot deck.
We like to produce art that
reflects the culture and history of Europe. We hope that you will
find our work of value.
|
