I still don’t know if I’m an artist. I have always considered that calling oneself an artist is something pretentious. It is true that I create new things from an intellectual and also a subconscious act, but I feel more comfortable when I think I am creative. On the other hand, I have not studied Fine Arts and this fact makes me think that I am an outsider. However, I don’t care about everything because I’ve been painting since I was a child and I will always continue to do so. Painting has allowed me to pay rent and eat, other times it has not been like that. If I defined myself as an artist, would I change anything?

Above all, nature inspires me. I can paint something like a portrait of a person, but it will never be quite so. The animals, the plants, the mountains, the rivers, the universe, the water, the rain, all the elements and the stones, also the cells, scales, wings, spores. All of this is always present because it is Nature and I feel that humanity ceased to be a part of it a long time ago. That is why I try to bring these two worlds closer together through painting and dreams. It is like imagining a hopeful future for the planet, even though it is not actually possible.

I am not a tarot expert. I have many different decks, even an oracle of my own creation. My intention is to edit a deck of Major Arcana as soon as possible, it is a project that is taking me a long time precisely because I understand the tarot in my own way. And I think there is no universal way to understand it, so the fact that I am not an expert in tarot would not be a big problem because I would know my own tarot perfectly.

I think it is a language in itself, another kind of language. But I also believe that its divinatory character is a construction. When Visconti decks appeared in fifteenth-century Italy, their intention was not to guess but to memorize the hierarchies and their functions. Divination as such is much older. The current tarot brings together many characteristics of memoizable hierarchical archetypes that we now identify as tools for self-knowledge. I believe that the tarot can help us to know the things that we don’t know that we already know. It is like walking at night along a path full of brambles but illuminated by the soft glow of the full moon

I started a dream journal and loved the experience but didn’t have enough consistency to stick with it. I would love to be able to take it up again but I need a suitable environment and environment that I don’t have right now. I remember dreams from decades ago and from time to time they come back to my mind and give me the same sensations as at the time of the dream. Other times my dreams return to places I have already dreamed of, as if they wanted to finish telling stories. Somehow I keep in my memory the most relevant dreams, their sensations and what they brought me throughout my life. On the theories of dreams and their materialization in daily routines and in life, I would like to recommend the literary work of Julio Monteverde.

I try to make my relationship with the subconscious conscious when I’m awake. Creations are born from that place and we must remain attentive to their movements. For me it is like a call at any time of day or night that reveals other realities to me. Sometimes I know how to take advantage of that call and transform it into what you can understand as art. Other times it is too blinding a light that has the power to paralyze me and shows me through its light a deep and infinite darkness. It is what you can understand by anxiety.

Nature is the biggest influence I have. There are also some people and artistic movements in those influences, either because of the color in their works, because of the absence of color, because of their way of describing heaven and hell. There are too many but these are a very small sample of what I mean: Chagall, Redon, Remedios Varo, William Blake, Teresa de Ávila, El Greco, Goya, Diane Arbus, baroque music.

I’ve been under another the name Jupiter for quite a few years. This month (September 2022) I have started a new cycle that has been brewing since spring. I would like to get more light on the road and be able to keep my feet on the ground, something that has never happened in my life.

For this reason, through Jupiter and almost by way of a “sigilo”, I intend to attract another way of seeing things without leaving aside my causality and gloom. I could have chosen Saturn and it really is what I wanted but we already know how Saturn treats already melancholic souls. I can’t afford that. Jupiter, as in the piece that Nicola Porpora (Alto Giove) composed to be performed by Farinelli, was a haven of peace in the stormy world of Felipe V. Leaving aside the stupid monarchy, Diana was a lunar goddess, daughter of Jupiter. In an astrological sense, Jupiter is associated with positive concepts such as abundance and optimism. And finally, I often say that “I live on Jupiter”, referring to the fact that I live in the clouds, that I am not attentive to reality and that I am a dreamer.

Lechuza is one of my music bands. We have started this summer of 2022 and we have just published our Demo. We are two friends making music, working with our hands on record packaging and trying to make nice videos of our songs. We are called Fantasmita and Ruda. Proceeds from sales go to an animal shelter. All the information is on our Bandcamp, and of course the music.

written by Diana Calabaza de Júpiter

Diana de Júpiter artistic training is intuitive and self taught. She prefers not to rely on any institution to interfere with her experience. Her themes hang between the dark and silent. She has worked for several Spanish publishers such as Aurora Dorada and La Felguera. Diana has had solo and group exhibitions in Spain, Mexico and the United States. She is currently preparing a complete tarot deck while painting daily.

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Hypnotic illustration and magical craftsmanship