Can you hear the willow branches rustling in the breeze? Can you feel the pure joy of being alive for swallows diving and dancing through the leaves? This painting should simultaneously relax and energize you in a most delightful manner. Does it make you sink deeper into meditation? Or does it make you fizz and pop and whiz, ready to take on the day or any new challenge? Maybe it depends on the time of day, your mood, or your circumstances. Either way, this painting does double-duty.

Happy, playful, carefree and swift, swallows are powerful totems for your space. They carry with them on the wing the healing energies of happiness, perspective, joy, speed, hope, regeneration and an embrace of your spiritual journey. Principally birds of spring and summer, they usher in the seasons and new life, and encourage us, too, to embrace “change as regeneration.” Birds are resilient and rise above.

Look at their aerial acrobatics, deftly diving, twisting and turning to avoid obstacles and skillfully catch insects. Swallows effortlessly embody happiness in motion, and teach us to navigate complicated situations - to maneuver and adapt to sudden changes in course – by stepping lightly and lithely and with no little amount of joie di vivre (dare we call it “dance”?). Swallows remind us to relax, let go, have fun, and don’t take life so hard!

The willow tree represents resonance and harmony, and is associated with the moon - yin energy, the Divine Feminine - which exists in us all, whether male or female, and is the part of our consciousness responsible for nurture, intuition, and empathy. When yin energy is at work, for example, we find collaboration over competition, intuition over intellect, creation over destruction, and nurture over criticism. Willows are also connected to the Water Element, which carries with it connotations of the subconscious, emotions, healing, and purification.

This painting is for you if you encounter complicated situations, struggle with feelings of depression or sadness, or find yourself stressing about the minutiae of daily life. Swallows do not promise a life free of hardship, but they can show you how to dance, and how to enjoy the journey, find peace and happiness in unexpected places.

Original artwork only, and painted to order, this piece is available in medium (roughly 12.5 x 26in) and large (roughly 18.5 x 38in) sizes; and either backed and ready for your own custom framing (on elegant gold-fleck shuen paper), or painted directly on a silk brocade hanging wall scroll, ready to hang straight from the box.

The medium scroll, containing the standard size painting, measures 39.5 x 19.5 inches. Colors vary according to what is available from the supplier, but typically can be in shades of white, green, brown, silver, light blue/grey, all in elegant silk brocade. Colors are all neutral from afar and complement any interior wall color and decor. I will reach out about scroll color after you place your order. The large scroll measures 59.5 x 23.5 inches.

Scrolls are hand-crafted of the finest materials - silk brocade, wooden rods, and rice paper - and are convenient to handle, store and hang.