Power Hive

I really love this piece for the concept of surrealism and the uniqueness that it presents through the subject matter. The cat appears to be very mechanical and machine-like, and is conveying movement through the present posture/pose that the subject has been created in. I her explanation where the artist talks about what this series is about (this piece is apart of a whole series), she writes "Originally believing that we shape our own lives, these experiences opened up the possibility that destiny is also an unavoidable aspect of our being." This is significant to this piece, because this makes sense in context with the subject matter and the title of the piece itself. When I think of the cat, the cat (to me) is symbolic of intuition or being intuitive. Cats wander and go places and do things without thinking about what they are doing. Bees symbolize wisdom through the idea that they collect pollen from a differentiation of flowers and turn the pollen into honey (they are smart and understand how to turn one thing into another). From this piece, I take away the idea that the more we work and the the more experiences we endure, the more knowledge we gain, and the more we begin to understand about the world around us and ourselves as individuals and who we are as internal beings. Through our work and things we experience, we do not know and we cannot plan where we will end up in life, but we let destiny guide us and take us there. The visual aspects of this piece are also very intriguing through the idea that they are very realistic yet surreal, which parallels with the idea of life (it is as realistic as it gets). Every external and internal detail is conveyed. The posture of the cat in this piece is also very significant, and I also feels that this adds onto the concept of destiny. Cats typically only scratch their ears if there is infection, which generally is unexpected and is unplanned (infection occurring). I love this piece because it is not only viually appealing, but i

Image derived from: Taillefer, Heidi. Power Hive. 2009. Painting. Heidi Taillefer, New York, New York. Web. 25 Nov 2013. <http://heiditaillefer.com/Power_Hive.html>.