Recently in between painting portraits of other people at Window Studio, I painted this “Self portrait with Lion.” In it, the glass security barrier at the Portland Zoo reflects zoo visitors as we contemplate a lion, or lioness actually, in the brilliant sunshine. At the time, I felt a yearning for, yet separation from the lion’s beauty and latent power. The puzzle-like quality of the image communicates something of the ambiguity of my own—and modern, technological, camera-bearing humanity’s—relationship to the natural world, which is of course not entirely natural, since this is still the zoo after all! Nevertheless, though it is captive, the lion is still a magnificent, regal beast and awakened a sense of latent aspiration for freedom that is pent up in me as well. It also reminded me of William Blake’s famous poem:
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
—The Tyger (1794) From Songs of Experience by William Blake, (1757–1827)