Father of the Apple

The reclining woman in the center of the painting represents the universal life force: she gives birth to the apples, which symbolize the stages of human life. We start our life as an unripe apple and gradually become a ripe, red apple. At some point the apple is cut off, leaving only the seeds.

The ladders are a symbol Victor uses frequently throughout his body of work; they represent the possibility of evolution of consciousness, from the material plane at the base of the ladder, through higher and higher levels of awareness. Toward the lower right of the painting, we see the ladder going up to a plateau of higher consciousness.

In the foreground we see a man who is sitting on the plateau. He lives his life in a state of spiritual awareness, and has built his home at this level.

The deserted ships on the plateau have been left by those who have lived and traveled at this level in the past, and who have now moved on to other realms, leaving the shipwrecks as evidence of their passage. Before departing, they send a message (anchor) down to those living at the base of the ladder, in our ordinary, material-plane consciousness. The people living at this level are studying a ladder and the anchor, trying to figure out what it’s all about.