Before the churches rose, before the calendars named the months, women walked the turning earth on bare feet and felt a pulse beneath them older than any catechism. This painting belongs to that elder country.
A woman dances at midnight among violet blossoms and dark loam, the ankles bound in thin chains. The damp ground below quickens with wildflowers and ribbons of teal brushwork, each stroke a small wind drawn through grass.
The piece takes its subject from “The Quickening,” a song from Shattered Goddess. It attempts in pigment what the music attempts in voice and string: a return to the pre-modern sense of the earth as a living thing. The old faiths understood this. So did every midwife, herbalist, and practitioner who held the earth sacred.
Acrylic on canvas, 30 × 40 inches