Some symbols arrive on the canvas without much negotiation. The triquetra is one of them. I had the knot in mind. The trees had other ideas, and we met somewhere in the middle.
A Trinity Knot Grown from the Wood
The composition is straightforward. Three trees, three boughs, one sign. Their branches arch and cross to form the threefold mark that pre-Christian Europe carved on its standing stones, and that the early monks of Iona later set into the margins of their gospels. Beneath the boughs, the grove deepens into shadow. A pale sky holds behind the branches, somewhere between moonrise and the last hour of dusk. A pair of crows keep their watch on the central crossing, as crows tend to do.
I did not set out to paint a forest. Once the first arc began to feel like bark, the rest of the painting fell into agreement.
A Note on the Symbol
The triquetra, from the Latin tri-quetrus meaning “three-cornered,” is older than the histories that try to claim it. It appears on Norse runestones, in the Book of Kells, on the bracteates of Migration-era Germania, and on Indian temple carvings well before any of these borrowings became fashionable. Three interlocked vesicas. One unbroken line. Whatever a given century decided it meant (sun, moon, earth; maiden, mother, crone; body, mind, spirit), the geometry held. The symbol kept its silence and let the centuries do the talking.
For the Quiet Hour
This is a piece for a contemplative wall. Above an altar. A reading nook. A writing desk where the lamp goes on before the sun goes down. It rewards the long look. The longer one stays with it, the more the grove gives up. A moss line. A path one might already have walked.
The Particulars
Original acrylic on oval canvas. Heavily textured ground; the bark and the earth carry a physical depth that flat reproduction cannot quite catch. Signed verso.
Acquiring the Painting
Available through Kreative Forge. Originals tend to leave at shows, so an early inquiry is the surer road. Limited prints can be arranged should the original have already found its grove.