The Warrior Story
Began 10 years ago with a sculpture called ‘The Offering’. In this piece I showed that the Warrior St. George (= St. Michael = Apollo, Sun God) unites with the Dragon (= Earth energy, Wisdom, Goddess) instead of slaying‑ her as Christianity would have it. I chose the Uffington White Horse, which is an ancient Dragon image, to offer her “hoof’ to rest on Warrior’s spear in a gesture of peace. Warrior is naked, vulnerable but still hiding behind his mask of a helmet, unsure of revealing his true nature to the Dragon.
Warrior4
Warrior2
The years pass and insight is gained through inner psychological growth processes. The Dragon is not easy, she breaks down prisons of dogma and fear and the ground quakes, but better to learn to ride her than fight. A true Warrior does this.
So Warrior 2001 stands alone, disarmed, naked, helmet raised, unmasked. Surrounded by his archetypal growth journeys he stands, like the Janus, between past and future, on the threshold with a cry, prayer or song to the heavens.
As with White Eagle the fossils and crystals revealed within the limestone, eons old, as are our archetypes, our common birth‑roots within the Earth’s bedrock forming through time to come to consciousness.
The sun’s apparent passage through the sky gives us time and lights the quarters of the stone through the day. I used to think my sculpture was about volume, mass, weight, solidity, but working as I have for the last four years within the elements, through the seasons, volatile self on the Dragon lines of Avebury, anchored by these big, static stones I’ve found that carving them is something other. It is primarily about catching the sun, the stone is simply and profoundly a vehicle for the Light.
Jane Rickards
Avebury 2001
*This also was written many years ago, but still holds true so I include it here.
However, simplicity is now the order of the day.