Painter of Lion Consciousness
- neilquester
- Aug 8
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 9
All paintings take us on a journey, process leading to revelations and often, greater insights. My art has been a testimony to such insights and searching for the mystery in life. The Earth Lion I painted in 2009 was the pinnacle point of my ‘personal journey’ as an artist.
A lion presence, a force, had been with me for decades. They first appeared to me in dreams since the beginning of the millennium. I remember on several occasions seeing a ‘lion man’ in my dreams, one that resembled myself at that time. Lions seemed to be with me through this period of creating esoteric art and illustrations. So much so, I went on to be inspired to write wrote a small illustrated novel in 2007-8 based on the ‘coming of the lions’ - ‘lion consciousness’. The book became part of a trilogy of stories called the Kokoro Chronicles, including the books Moon Slayer and Aeon Rising.
The lions never left my side through 2008 into to 2009 as I continued to feel their presence, draw and paint. I researched many various strands of what the lion meant to ancient peoples and cultures that had venerated the Lion through art, symbols and myth.
In 2009 I attended an artists residency in Northern California, Nevada
City (courtesy of Dana Lynne Andersen) where I started to make imagery based on higher consciousness, looking at the wider subjects relating to world peace.
I took around 10 flights over America in 2009 and returned again in 2010 to journey across the South and Midwest of North America, across the Navajo and Hopi Indian reservations on a mammoth road trip. On my return to the UK, I organised a ‘retrospective’ exhibition of paintings based on my travels, and what I was feeling. World Peace and ‘Draw not War’ became a focus for the exhibition.
It was in the autumn of 2009 when I started to paint the lion I now call Earth Lion Consciousness. The lion image appeared on the book cover of, Human Race Get Off Your Knees, The Lion Sleeps No More by the author David Icke in 2010. Besides many other images created at this time, this lion (below) is still viewed as an icon of our time and the era of ‘awakening’ to our true power, collectively.
The year 2010 brought further travel as I went to New York with David and saw my lion for the first time in digital form enlarged on the screens of the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. The imagery flashed up all weekend at the Nokia Theatre where David addressed several thousand people.This period was Seminole for me, and a realisation that my work had reached a larger audience. What followed was a surge of inspiration and desire to bring ‘lion consciousness’ into my life, my reality. The same year an Alberta art schoolteacher, Wendy Salter, celebrated my work through initiating a fantastic lion project through her pupils leading towards a large exhibition of children’s art. Bewteen 2009 and 2018, I produced more Lion paintings. They spoke to my consciousness and along with many other themes during that decade, and all wanted a presence in out reality. Durga Awakens (below) was born from the Moon Slayer narrative and painting in 2016.
Over the autumn of 2009, I painted several large-scale canvases, from my studio in Hungerford, West Berkshire, where I lived for almost 15 years. I produced all of my lion images from this location, situated south of Oxford on the legendary spine of ancient Albion. One painting came to me during this period of creativity, another lion image I called ‘Christ Lion Consciousness’ (below), and both Earth Lion and Christ Lion were ‘brothers’ symbolically. They were painted together, or, lets say birthed together. They are both celebrated by the 15-year re-launch of my imagery and this new website.
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