© Uriél Dana 2017.

Painting Symbolism
Hindsight, Oil on Canvas, 1988, by Uriél Dana & Gage Taylor (died 2000).

Gage Taylor and I rarely painted large oils. Hindsight is one of the three largest. Painted on multiple sanded coats of gesso on a surface as smooth as skin and in layers of oil glazes that create a multidimensional depth. This painting embodies every universal archetype from the East, the West, and the Middle East found in a Taylor Dana painting.

Many cultures around the world use the temple as a symbol for the body, either literally, like the great cathedrals of Europe, or metaphorically, as in the chakra system. The body or temple represented a portal to our soul in a Taylor-Dana oil.

Each of us is a temple of treasure, and as we explore that treasure, we often discover jewels within ourselves we may not be aware of. (The hidden treasure in the background).

We used carpets as the symbol for the secret doctrines, inspired by the flying carpet legends, which evolved from the use of prayer rugs.

Cats, large and small, were used in temples all around the world because of their ability to sense the non physical as well as the physical. Cheetah’s were a favorite of ours because they are the most telepathic and dog like of the feline kingdom. Joy Adamson (author of the well known book and movie, Born Free), kept and studied Cheetahs for years and revealed their astonishing personalities in a book called, The Spotted Sphinx. We embraced their character often as a symbol of the higher self.

You can see more of my artwork here.

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Artwork: “Hindsight”, Uriél Dana & Gage Taylor, ©1988.  Oil On Canvas (Gage Taylor died in 2000).


Uriél Danā on a film shoot with Walter Greenbird

Uriél Danā has been a Professional Fine Artist 38 years specializing in oils, gouache, and bronze, and is a Contemporary Figurative Art Curator.

She is an Air Force Veteran and former USIA (State Department) Ambassador to the Arts. She is a graduate of the 2016 Writers Guild of the West (Los Angeles, CA) Veterans Writing Project.

A Contributing Editor on the Arts, Buddhism and Culture, Uriél contributes regularly to online and print magazines in addition to international journals. She has won many awards for her poetry and has been included in two anthologies. For National Poetry Month, April 2020, her poems were  featured on San Francisco’s public radio station, KPFA.

A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Uri has lived on three continents and visited 44 countries.



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