I have three art shows and markets coming up over the next two months. While talking with a close friend recently about what I’ve been painting, I felt something shift. For the first time, I wanted to explain the two recurring figures that keep appearing in my work.
Not defensively. Not academically.
Just honestly.
There are two main characters that surface again and again in my paintings: a curled snake and a bird. I didn’t consciously design them as a symbolic system. They arrived long before I could articulate what they meant. Only recently have I begun to understand that they are visual expressions of the same philosophical ideas I’ve been developing in writing — what I call Mirror Theory and Forcing Theory.
The snake is almost always coiled. It is not lunging. Not attacking. Not even fully moving. It is potential contained. To me, it represents the kind of energy that builds inside a person when they begin striving for growth — spiritual, intellectual, creative, psychological. It is what some traditions call kundalini energy. It is raw possibility. It is the force that allows transformation to occur.
But it is coiled for a reason.
Growth is destabilizing. When you expand beyond your previous identity, structures loosen. Beliefs fracture. Relationships recalibrate. The world you thought was solid becomes more fluid. That energy, if forced recklessly, can overwhelm the seeker. Not because growth is evil, but because integration takes time. Potential mishandled becomes chaos.
The snake is not evil in my work. It is powerful. And power requires care.
The bird, on the other hand, is the herald. It sings warnings. It watches. It hovers near the snake, sometimes interacting with it, sometimes appearing to guard or challenge it. The bird represents awareness — the reflective layer of consciousness that asks whether we are ready for what we are about to awaken.
At first glance, it might seem like the bird is warning us about the snake’s danger. But over time I’ve realized something more subtle. The bird is not afraid of the snake. The snake is pure potential. The real danger comes from us — from ego, from impatience, from projection. The bird cautions us not because power is bad, but because unexamined ambition can fracture the self.
This realization mirrors the foundations of Mirror Theory. The theory proposes that our experiences, relationships, and conflicts reflect the internal structure of the self. The snake in my paintings is not an external force descending upon me. It is me. My potential. My expansion. My volatility. The bird is also me — awareness observing that expansion, asking whether it is grounded or reactive.
What we often interpret as danger in the world is the mirror reflecting our own instability back to us.
Forcing Theory enters here as well. In that framework, consciousness is not static. It either expands or collapses. Awareness must generate novelty, must push into new configurations, or it stagnates. The coiled snake is that forcing energy in potential form. It is expansion waiting to occur. But expansion without structure leads to fragmentation. The system must regulate itself. The bird and snake together form a dynamic tension — energy and awareness, propulsion and integration.
Looking back, I find it fascinating that I painted these figures before I fully articulated the theories. The myth came before the math. My subconscious was already working out the system in symbols before my rational mind constructed the language around it.
Now, as I prepare for these upcoming shows, I feel ready to speak about them openly. Not to prescribe meaning, but to share where they came from. The coiled snake and the singing bird are not decorative motifs. They are reflections of an internal dialogue — between force and reflection, between potential and caution, between expansion and integration.
The snake is not the threat.
The threat was always misunderstanding the self who tries to wield it.
And once that mirror stabilizes — once awareness matures — the snake does not strike.
It unfolds.