Kaelan + Ecstatic Self

A new painting

Added 2025-07-03 16:53:06 +0000 UTC

I wanted to share this painting I created over the past two days, as a way of honoring my 38th year. It’s a piece I’ve been carrying inside me for many months, waiting for the right moment to bring it through.

The image is called Ardhanarishvara—the sacred union of Shiva and Shakti, the divine masculine and feminine embodied as one. For me, this painting is a reclamation of many things: the holiness of emptiness and fullness, of stillness and fire, of sexuality and spirituality. Earth and space. Form and formlessness. All of it alive in each of us.

It’s also a mirror of my own longing to move into greater wholeness—to integrate the parts of myself that once felt at odds, and to accept the totality of who I am. This journey toward integration is one I’ve spoken about often with you all, and this image is a prayer, a milestone, and a transmission of that unfolding.

May it meet you in some tender or luminous place on your own path today.

With love and blessings,

Kaelan

PS: I likely won’t share this image publicly because, although the nudity and depiction of the lingam and yoni are traditional… There are many in today’s culture who would find it scandalous. I’m sure you all can hold the sacredness of this depiction.