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Artist: Sam Millard Puzzle Design: Jasen Robillard Dimensions: 42.7 cm x 32.1 cm, irregular edge Piece Count: 501 Difficulty: 4 out of 5 "Ring the bells that still can ring |
Table of Contents
About the Artist: Artist Name
Sam Millard paints from a home studio in Kimberley, British Columbia, working in oil and acrylic under the name How Original Art. Born in the United Kingdom in 1985, she immigrated to Canada in 2008, and her work carries both halves of that journey — a style that first took shape at Long Road College in Cambridge, where the colour and form of Franz Marc pointed her toward cubism and futurism, now applied to a lifelong attention to the mountains, water, and wildlife of her adopted province.
Sam is drawn to old stories — the ones that show up, in different clothes, in nearly every culture on the planet. She's spoken about her fascination with flood myths that appear across civilizations with no apparent contact between them, and what that says about how much of our shared history might be carried forward not as fact but as image. Resilience & Rebirth continues that inquiry into the mythic imagery of the phoenix.
She's also spoken about what she hopes people take from her work more broadly: that a different point of view can change everything, and that the same painting will reveal unique meaning to each individual — each one valid, each one worth listening to.
Links
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A Primer for Forgetting by Lewis Hyde — a meditation on forgetting as a creative and even redemptive force, not merely memory's failure.
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Rubber Ducks: The Power of Symbols by Uma Krishnaswami — on how a plain object can carry a story too dangerous, or too large, to say outright.
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A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher — the history of the Acadian expulsion, le grand dérangement, and the long Canadian story of exile and return.
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Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland — on the ordinary, unglamorous discomfort of making anything at all, and why quitting is the only real failure.
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Dream Catchers: Legends, Lore & Artifacts by Cath Oberholtzer
Jasen's Puzzle Design Notes
Two Words, Two Worlds
Timor and Amor — fear and love — are the forces that sit at the root of this puzzle, in the same way they sit at the root of most issues worth solving.
Timor represents what we're afraid to face: the force that fragments, isolates, and convinces us that our common needs can best be met via separation. Amor in contrast is what consistently binds and heals — love not as sugar-sweet sentiment, but rather the active courage that labours to repair what fear has broken.
In this way, Timor is a dragon that hoards and suspiciously defends treasure. Amor as phoenix has nothing to protect, nothing to defend — it lives on as the regenerative, living embodiment of human spirit and beauty.
Lewis Hyde's A Primer for Forgetting makes a case that runs parallel to the puzzle’s intended focus: getting over our dark past requires both forgiveness and a deliberate forgetting. Our most generative human acts often require a willingness to release a grip — on a grievance, an old wound, a version of yourself that no longer fits. As Hyde suggests, getting over our past requires an eagle-eyed remembering and a letting go, so that a rekindled relationship can be born anew.
The Middle Way
The whimsical shapes embedded in this puzzle can be sorted into two registers. What's light — birds, butterflies, feathers, friendship unguarded — rises to the top of the canvas. What's heavy — armour, weapons, tyrannical crowns of power — settles low. These shapes are deliberately placed to make the contrast clear. In order to solve the puzzle, you’ll need to navigate both the heavy and the light. As Parker J. Palmer suggests, acknowledgement of both is the way we discover our own hidden wholeness.
This hidden wholeness is further echoed in several hidden alternate solutions, including a Dreamcatcher. This hidden symbol is intended as a humble, neighbourly peace offering, with earnest gratitude to the Ojibwe tradition it emerged from and the many indigenous cultures who have since adopted it as a source of wisdom. In its traditional use, a dreamcatcher's web catches what's heavy in a sleeper's dreams and lets what's light pass through. We share it here as an invitation to learn a little more about where it comes from, and to hold it with the respect it's earned.
Choosing Resilience
One doesn’t need to search long to find examples of human resilience. I share three quick examples from some of the reading that inspired this puzzle design.
Acadians in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick lived through “le grand dérangement” or the Great Upheaval from 1755 until 1763. Decades after being scattered by tyrannical forces, they took up Stella Maris, the old sailor's star, as a symbol of hope. Their return home from forced displacement is ongoing. They continue to build community from the humble sparks they managed to maintain.
The philosopher Robert Misrahi spent his career arguing that happiness isn't luck. His belief was that happiness was more akin to conversion, a decision to turn your attention toward creative, embodied presence instead of resentment and fear. Amor, in this reading, isn't a feeling that finds you. It's a choice you keep making, forever.
Finally, Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom provides the counterexample. Fromm describes what happens when people find the weight of their own freedom too much to bear: rather than doing the harder work of becoming and tempering themselves through courage, Timor convinces them to cede their agency to a crowd or a cause that promises false certainty. Amor takes more courage than that.
What You're Left Holding
None of this forgetting and forgiveness works if it stays abstract. My hope is that solving this puzzle can be a first step in finding the courage and the tools you need to face your dragons. With a sword of loving discernment reforged from phoenix flames, you'll touch on something Hyde, Misrahi, and a few hundred years of Acadian history all seem to agree on: what breaks you doesn't get the last word. You do.
Whimsy List
- 3x phoenixes
- 2x swans
- 2x butterflies
- 2x feathers
- rubber ducky
- Holy Grail
- friends, arm in arm
- lightning bolt
- 2x crowns
- 2x axes
- 2x gauntlets
- helm
- shield
- dumbell
- kettlebell
- anchor
Hidden Whimwhams
- Dreamcatcher
- Sword of Loving Discernment, reforged
- Timor the Dragon (in manageable fragments)
- Yin Yang dragon and phoenix
- Lightbulb
Hidden Secrets
Clue 1: Secret Image
Clue 2: Puzzle Map
