Ouroboros Portal Needlepoint Canvas

The ouroboros was used by alchemists and gnostics in ancient times, as the symbol of the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation.

Sometimes the ouroboros is depicted with an eye in the center of the circling snake. The eye is known as a symbol for the third eye, intuition, or the “all-seeing eye.” In my design, I use the ouroboros as a lens through which the viewer is looking at a scene both through and around the circling snake, reversing the ancient alchemical vantage point. 

Swirling inside of the snake's movement is a portal to a scene of the same landscape at a different time. The interior landscape is shown at dawn or dusk, and the exterior landscape is shown at night. This symbolic representation drives the point home that life is in a constant state of movement, of cycles. From cycles of day-to-night, to cycles of birth and death, to the perpetual cycles of the body's rhythms - as we exhale and inhale. 

I didn’t have a specific place in mind for my landscape and city scape on the water.  I wanted this scene to be an “anyplace” so that the viewer or stitcher can connect the landscape with some site of significance in their own lives. For me, it is reminiscent of Istanbul along the Bosphorus, the ancient city that has been made and re-made through the centuries; a tangible expression of the paradox that is constancy through reinvention.

From a stitching standpoint, the large ouroboros design presents incredible opportunity for decorative stitching and embellishments, with lots of color and vibrancy throughout the piece. 

The 13 mesh version is x . 

The 18 mesh version is x. 

Both versions are brought to needlepoint canvas via StitchPerfect printing.