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VIRGO
1974
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As he made clear later in his own commentary (Astrology: Signs of the Zodiac), the paintings are more than illustrations of the traditional Zodiac. They combine signs and images from Cabbala, Magick, Alchemy and the Tarot to become a complex and graduated series of meditations. An acquaintance with the doctrines of Neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, and the Cabbala underlies their composition, and invites the viewer to contemplate these works as doorways to self-transcendence.
In his Unio Mystica, Hermes Trismegistos, and The Zodiac Series, Johfra’s Hermetic works reached their resounding climax. He unerringly displayed a singular talent, indeed, a genius for symbolic thinking. For, the artist not only penetrated into the meaning of these traditional esoteric symbols, but aligned and arranged them in new, unusually creative and meaningful ways.
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PISCES
1974
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Iconography aside, these major Hermetic works are also high artistic accomplishments. His years of sketching and painting permitted him to render anatomy, drapery, poses, light, atmosphere, texture, clouds, landscapes, and nature in a masterly way. The telluric and organic textures from the Mindscapes are here, both in the backgrounds and the framing elements; they provide the paintings with a fantastic quality. But his fine studies from Nature are also in evidence: accurate animal anatomy, plants, leaves, flowers and trees all rendered with exactitude. In the Pisces, we even behold once more the underwater coralline growths and anemones that so fascinated him in Out of the Egg thirty years ago.
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