The Sage painting is one of the twelve Jungian personality archetypes as depicted by Ashton Kaleigh for the Reflections Art Exhibit.

The Sage Original Painting

Mixed Media

36 x 48 Inches

Stretched Gallery Wrapped Canvas

©Ashton Kaleigh 2023

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Artist’s notes:

This painting is one of my favorites of the 12 part series about the Jungian personality archetypes. The Sage represents knowledge and wisdom. This painting is full of symbolism. 

The seven liberal arts are subjects important to an education for a well rounded individual as believed in Ancient Greece through the Middle ages. They believed these seven subjects help the student develop essential thinking skills. The Trivium are the lower three subjects - grammar, logic, and rhetoric which deal with language and communication. They are the foundation to learning. The golden keys represent the Trivium as they unlock the ability to learn and communicate.

The other liberal arts that make up the Quadrivium are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The Quadrivium is represented by the tentacles of an octopus. Octopuses are incredibly intelligent creatures but have 8 arms so the fact that only 4 are showing is to represent that there are things seen and unseen and yet they exist. Some truths are visible while some are not.

The golden moons in 3 stages represent the past, present, and future. The present is the full moon with the keyhole. The Trivium is the key to unlock it all with wisdom and knowledge. It is important to learn from the past, look forward to the future, but most importantly to be in the present.

The skull with the third eye is the Sage himself. In the middle of it all, seeing, perceiving beyond ordinary sight. I chose to use skulls in this series because the archetypes represent us all- regardless of skin color, beliefs, or any other superficial differences a human might have from another.. Sometimes an individual resonates with a particular archetype  or many at once. It may also change as we journey through life..