Spectacle of awareness: Exhibition explores feminine perception through imaginatively realistic approach

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Do you want an art that comes from the inner being of the artist and becomes visible via imagination overdrive?

Then the Cultural Arts Department in San Benito has the show for you! In the large exhibition “Nova Aurora,” Veronica Jaeger takes her divine feminine character further in her quest for cosmic unity within a complex and often contradictory world. These works explore the terrestrial and transcendental with oil paintings, drawings, and sculptures and invites the viewer to engage with enchanted landscapes of vivid color, contrasting tones, and remarkable juxtapositions that connect sensation and spectacle.

This collection is a search for cosmic wholeness, a coming together of typically disparate ideas looking for their logical and true reality. “Concepts like the soul, the divine feminine, and traditional tales and myths have fascinated me since childhood and have served as inspiration for my work,” Jaeger professed. “I have created my own reality from different pieces.”

An earlier series darkly depicted the feminine as empty toys, comprised of artificial parts, isolated and unaware. They later morphed into awareness through heads connected to the cosmos and claimed their place in a natural and futuristic world. “The Day of the Comet” speaks of this development. Shown with her dog, the feminine is still a sleeping toy-construct, but has developed a third eye in a small bubble-of-nature atop her head. Prophetically, a cat sits in the comet.

Jaeger wants to get her divine feminine character into a natural source after earlier dominance by artificial structures. ‘Bubble Nature” does this by showing a wide-eyed soul connection. The direction of the works at this point evolve to allow awareness on a higher level; the bubble symbolizes connection to nature, and here, it connects the soul with a living house. The figure looks away from remnants of artificial things and destruction and upward towards a cosmic enlightenment. In the most recent paintings, unity with nature and the cosmos has become a success. “Bye Bye Pisces” depicts a utopian pool with two souls resonating beyond physical identity through supreme radiant consciousness. Emphasizing unity and empathy, they both display cat’s feet, human torsos, and hold small images of physical identities on sticks that blend into the environment. Groupings of smaller works provide individual images apart from the large multi-image epic paintings. A graphite drawing from the “Tales Abound” group, shows a house whose dog is the central spirit. There are also human, natural, extra-terrestrial, and artificial inhabitants, but the soul of the house may well be the small feminine perched on the roof whose head is bubble encased.

“I like the randomness of the piece,” explained Jaeger, “Like where you have the soul wondering what it’s about, that’s why I have the bubble. For example, the head is something that is tied to the cosmos. Bubbles are the natural element, you are a bubble, the bubble is the soul.” The house sculptures have taken on lives of their own. There is “Stella” with a mouth and ear, and “Yo-landa” on feminine legs wearing a tutu. “The house — everything that comes out of it, I don’t know what’s going to happen; I don’t know if it’s saying something; I don’t care,” concluded Jaeger.

Make San Benito a destination route to see “Nova Aurora” at the CAD and enjoy a truly unique exhibition experience.

‘Nova Aurora’

WHERE: CAD San Benito Cultural Heritage Museum, 250 Heywood St., San Benito