The Goddess calls in different ways – usually through love. Her inspiration moves us from love for someone or something specific, to a passion that expands in ever-widening circles till its waves lap on shores we never dreamed of. There are millions of stories that speak of the power of goddess energy. I know at least three from personal experience. The first is mine.

Anne’s Story: Artist/Writer/Mother

Like most mothers, I adore my children. But I felt a special love and concern for my youngest daughter, Amanda. Lost and wandering in a life-threatening eating disorder, her descent was frightening.

We rallied to her defense, seeking medical and therapeutic help, but nothing seemed to help. Then one day, I painted her a birthday card. I poured my love and hopes for her into the image. It was of a goddess – full bodied and gorgeous – lounging under a tree. She looked like Amanda. Behind her, a group of super-slender nymphs glared at her jealously. The caption read, “You’re a GODDESS, not a nymph! GO, goddess!” It was a reminder that beauty comes in different packages; that divinity lay dormant within her. She just needed to reclaim it. Amanda loved it.

Over the next few years, as she gradually won the hard-fought battle to return to health, I continued to produce cards expressing my love and belief in her ultimate return to joy, I was learning about eating disorders, and came to understand that many women (and men) suffer from our culture’s obsession with ridiculous standards of physical perfection. I studied goddess mythology and loved the powerful role models they were for the modern goddess. I wove their strong, affirming messages into my images and stories.

All this evolved into my present line Goddess Cards. No longer just for my child, the original inspiration for my work, they reach out to women of every kind. Women who have forgotten, or never been told, that all of them are goddesses – rich in power and potential - and all of them are beautiful!

Gaston Lachaise’s Story: Sculptor / Husband

Gaston Lachaise’s inspiration was his beloved wife. I first saw his monumental work, “Standing Woman,” in a courtyard in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City over 40 years ago. I’ve never forgotten her – or the story of how she came to be created. She’s another example of how the goddess moves us from the specific to the eternal. Lachaise was a young French artist working in Paris in the early twentieth century, when he met and fell in love with Isabel Dutaud Nagle, a married American woman ten years his senior. She became his lifelong muse. He left France, followed her back to the United States, and married her. She became his model as well as his wife. Her voluptuous figure was the incarnation of his vision of the Ideal Woman. Life wasn’t easy for them. To earn a living, Lachaise first labored as a full time assistant to two well-known academic sculptors, developing his own projects in his spare time. He is most famous for his magnificent nude bronze sculptures celebrating Isabel’s robust, erotic beauty.

His nudes have been compared to the work of Renoir – a painter who also loved women. But for me, “Standing Woman” makes a far stronger statement. She is a true modern goddess, rivaling the glorious marble statues of female deities from ancient Greece. But, unlike them, she has no drapery to hide her body, no symbols of authority to assert her power. Proud, unashamed, and sublimely confident and relaxed in her femininity, she is an inspiration. She has become an icon of the Divine Feminine. Lachaise died in 1935, and is considered to be one of the greatest sculptors of his time.

Tracy Ginsberg: Multi-Media and Performance Artist

“My earliest images were of women,” she says. Ginsberg’s vision was a big one. She proceeded to tackle it in a big way. She has painted a graffiti series, Urban Odes on walls and buildings in San Francisco and NewYork. On pagan holidays, she creates ephemeral earth-works on beaches and hillsides as altars to the goddess. She developed a unique artistic vocabulary called her “Goddess Alphabet,” containing dozens of icons of women, including Tara, the great Tibetan Mother Creator goddess; the seeds of a pomegranate, and birthing and vagina images. Animal and nature images are part of the lexicon. These icons are screened, painted, drawn, sewn and woven throughout her work like a secret code. Different fabrics, paints, crayons, lace, mirrors, sheet music, hand and footprints, are also used, demonstrating women’s gift for reconciling opposites, and bringing dissimilar elements together in harmonious whole.

In 2002, she founded and became the Creative Director of fulcrumProjects, an experimental, multidisciplinary art company that produces interactive, collaborative installations and performance pieces.

A fulcrumProjects piece, Homage to the 21 Taras, recently shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, fuses Ginsberg’s visual art with original music, dance, and singing contributed by other company members. Floating panels were silk-screened with images of Tara and other elements of the “Goddess Alphabet.” Dancers whirled and spun through the panels. A singer, whose voice embodied the mystery and power of the goddess, chanted her mantra. Audience response to the goddess message was overwhelming.

“My art is something I do for my own healing. It’s my story. It may apply to you. Your story’s what’s important. We need more women out there, telling their stories.”

In all her work, Ginsberg’s core intention as an artist remains unwavering.

“Our world is in crazy imbalance. We’re missing the balance of female energy. My work is to reaffirm and reconnect with the sacred female influence - and it’s focus on life, love, peace, and nurturing. If we don’t, we’ll self-destruct.”

What’s your story? Your inspiration? What do you love? Whatever it is, listen carefully. Everyone is an artist, charged with contributing something to the mosaic of the world.

Take your love, and apply it to yourself first. Then spread it around. Hold fast to the inspiration of love and joy. We need it so badly.