etal
To me the most striking—and initially puzzling—thing about the Vertigo Queen of Wands is that she’s set within a frame, and in fact she looks out at us (somewhat balefully, I think) from a frame within a frame within a frame—from inside 3, 4, or even 5 frames, if you count the card itself as a frame. And if you take a closer look, you will note that the left side of the inmost frame turns into the fiery Wand that both identifies the suit and suggests Dave McKean’s intent here—he wants us to know just how integral the notion of “framing” is to his overall concept of this particular Wands card:
http://www.area23.org/perdition/reverie/tarot/wands_frameset.html
Which leaves us with the question: Why the prominent frame?
Within the frame, the Queen’s face is itself genderless, the royal crown so rooted in the essence of the one who wears it that it seems to grow out of his/her head.
The face is pale, wan, drained of the color that an inner passion and excitement project into the outer world, a whirling world of painterly expression that fills every available space in the inner frame; the one “good” eye, the right eye, is liquid and clear, awake to every impression that strikes it, while the left eye is obliterated in a swirl of creativity that shoots off the face with tornado-like energy to mesh with the “canvas” that vibrates in every color of the rainbow to the exact edges of the frame.
It’s all this colorful passion and creativity—a potentially stormy mix—that provides a clue as to why Dave McKean has provided this Queen with a frame. He has constructed it, I think, to control the massive output of energy that surrounds the face and to suggest that the Queen’s high level of fiery, colorful exuberance must be channeled or “framed” within a doable project or endeavor in the same way that an artist paints on a canvas of certain dimensions and then puts a frame around it to declare his work complete.
Creativity often struggles against—and then finds itself realized within—given boundaries. It’s these boundaries that I see in Dave McKean’s frame, and I think an understanding of its meaning is essential to our interpretation of the Vertigo Queen of Wands.
http://www.area23.org/perdition/reverie/tarot/wands_frameset.html
Which leaves us with the question: Why the prominent frame?
Within the frame, the Queen’s face is itself genderless, the royal crown so rooted in the essence of the one who wears it that it seems to grow out of his/her head.
The face is pale, wan, drained of the color that an inner passion and excitement project into the outer world, a whirling world of painterly expression that fills every available space in the inner frame; the one “good” eye, the right eye, is liquid and clear, awake to every impression that strikes it, while the left eye is obliterated in a swirl of creativity that shoots off the face with tornado-like energy to mesh with the “canvas” that vibrates in every color of the rainbow to the exact edges of the frame.
It’s all this colorful passion and creativity—a potentially stormy mix—that provides a clue as to why Dave McKean has provided this Queen with a frame. He has constructed it, I think, to control the massive output of energy that surrounds the face and to suggest that the Queen’s high level of fiery, colorful exuberance must be channeled or “framed” within a doable project or endeavor in the same way that an artist paints on a canvas of certain dimensions and then puts a frame around it to declare his work complete.
Creativity often struggles against—and then finds itself realized within—given boundaries. It’s these boundaries that I see in Dave McKean’s frame, and I think an understanding of its meaning is essential to our interpretation of the Vertigo Queen of Wands.
