Around and Around...
The ouroboros - an ancient symbol of fertility, totality, eternity, being a serpent or dragon chewing its own tail. The design below is a 'cleaned up rough' of the first visualization I created for this project, last autumn, and grew out of a sketchbook scribble originally planned to be a collaboration with a metalworking student, aimed at producing a brooch or similar piece of physical jewelry design: With its horn or antler, the design also echoes the hybrid beasts of Celtic/Pictish design, and my own 'cosmic beast' which is supposed to embody attributes of all animals, being the progenitor of all species. The design is also intended to look in two directions at once, in something of an Escher-like visual paradox - the tail curving around in one plane to be held in the mouth, but also suggestive of moving away from the viewer and ending up behind the snake's head, hinted at by the distortion applied to the bodily decorations, and the fact the inner space is not