Well, summer is finally approaching: foggy at the beach, scorching temperatures inland! This is a gentle reminder to cool your heels in Santa Monica this Thursday, June 20 at The Myth Salon when Sophie Dufresne will take us through “The Struggle to Know Oneself: Confronting the Opposites Through the Love of Art, Stories, and Mathematics.” Using her own original art and the colorful imagery of the Renaissance illuminated manuscript, The Splendor Solis, Sophie will present a series of symbolic images inspired by personal stories that she developed to serve as a tool for self-discovery by way of a paradoxical marriage of logic and intuition. Expressed as pairs of opposites, the images constitute fundamental patterns of behavior observed first on an individual level and her personal circle of friends and acquaintances then, progressively, also on a societal level through news stories, podcasts, and entertainment media. With an outlook toward historical precedents, she will also explore how the images relate to the stages of individuation using the medieval imagery of the Tarot together with The Splendor Solis. Having seen her art myself, which I feel has the character and substance of Matisse’s graphic cutouts, I was thrilled when she said she would develop a presentation for The Myth Salon. We’ll be downstairs, so I can’t wait to see her imagery on the HDTV!
Sophie Dufresne is an independent artist offering services in illustration, painting, graphic design, and animation, who also markets and sells products such as notebooks, prints, and accessories embellished with her own designs under the name Sophiequi. She is about to complete the certificate program in Jungian Studies at the Los Angeles Jung Institute while concurrently developing a deck of Oracle cards for use as an aid to personal individuation and Jungian therapy. She brings to her artistic approach a healthy spirit of scientific curiosity and playful logic coupled with rigorous research she inherited from her studies in engineering and mathematics at Montreal Polytechnique and Virginia Tech.