Artwork
As Above, So Below
Private Collection
2019 · Oil on Canvas
A contemporary woman, cats and Hermetic words — spiritual wisdom brought down into the everyday.
The Story Behind the Painting
Smaller and more playful than Vani’s large celestial paintings, As Above, So Below belongs to another stage of her spiritual journey: a period concerned increasingly with embodying wisdom rather than simply acquiring it.
A contemporary woman occupies the centre of the painting, surrounded by everyday and imaginative elements, including headphones, bags and cats, animals that also carry a particular spiritual significance for Vani.
Alongside her appear the Hermetic words: As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.
These words are central to the meaning of the painting. For Vani, spiritual understanding cannot remain merely intellectual. Reading, learning or mentally absorbing spiritual concepts is only one part of the journey. There comes a point at which what has been understood must also be lived.
The painting therefore deliberately brings the philosophical and the ordinary into the same space. Spirituality exists alongside the everyday woman moving through the physical world.
As Above, So Below reflects that movement from knowing towards lived wisdom and embodiment, where the inner and outer worlds increasingly begin to reflect one another.
