Myths...

Have I ever mentioned that I think too much?

Today I remembered one of the very first myths that I read...it was Edith Hamilton's version of Pyramus and Thisbe....

In the story two lovers and neighbors cannot be together because of their parents and the only way they can communicate is through a chink in the wall that separates them. They decide to meet beneath a white berried mulberry tree. Thisbe gets there first and spys a lioness fresh from the kill....Thisbe flees but drops her cape behind. The lioness finds the cape and tears it with her mouth as she wipes her face on it. When Pyramus arrives and finds the bloody cape, fears he has sent his love to her death and hastens his own...

Later when Thisbe returns and finds Pyramus dying she in turn stabs herself with his sword and together they perish...

The white mulberries hanging in the tree above them were forever stained dark red with their blood....

Now, I remembered reading this as I was going through paintings, posting pictures and updating shops... Check out prints here

A recurring thing I paint is a tree rooted in a heart....

A part of me wonders if this painting is not in some way...a regurgitation of this myth after being embedded in my brain...

I love myths and mythology, I love the way they shape us and tell us about our selves, our loves and our fears....

Myths can bend, twist, and change their faces and give us universal truths about humans...

I try to explore this with my art....reinventing myth or at least giving certain paintings a old, traveled look to them...which is what I think a myth would look like if it had a face...old, traveled, slightly weary and slightly impish....with a certain twinkle in her eye...

What myths do remember or do you feel have shaped you?