Organic Tarot Update : The Sun

The Sun

Organic Tarot | 9” × 12” Collage

There is a version of the Sun that asks us to shine brighter, to achieve more, to become someone worthy of standing in the light.

I no longer believe in that version.

As I worked on this card, I found myself thinking about my father. He was a man of discipline, expectations, and extraordinary capability. From him I inherited many gifts: curiosity, craftsmanship, resilience, and an appreciation for making something well. I also inherited perfectionism the quiet belief that love, success, or even rest had to be earned through flawless execution.

For years I carried that burden without realizing it. Every photograph needed to be perfect. Every exhibition needed to justify itself. Every opportunity felt like an exam.

This collage became a conversation with that inheritance.

At its center stands a worker dressed in overalls, haloed by a brilliant golden sun. He isn’t a king or a hero. He is simply present. His value isn’t measured by what he produces but by the fact that he stands, rooted between cultivated landscapes and impossible blue skies. Around him, flowers emerge from forms that resemble carrots, ordinary vegetables transformed into monuments. The everyday becomes sacred.

That feels like the lesson of The Sun.

The card isn’t about perfection. It is about illumination. Light reveals rather than judges. It asks us to see what has always been there: the ordinary miracle of being alive.

The fractured architecture surrounding the figure speaks to the structures we inherit family expectations, cultural definitions of success, careers, identities. Some support us. Others eventually become too small. Above them all stretches an open expanse of blue, reminding me that there is always more sky than ceiling.

As I continue building Organic Tarot, each card becomes less about illustrating traditional symbolism and more about documenting a season of my own life. This Sun arrives after years marked by illness, grief, professional transition, and the slow rebuilding of an artistic practice that finally belongs to me. It is the first time I have felt the warmth of creating without needing to prove anything.

Perhaps that is the true gift of the Sun.

Not achievement.

Not certainty.

Simply standing in your own light long enough to recognize that it has been yours all along.