Luminous Pride - A Symphony in Rose

Luminous Pride (A Symphony in Rose)

This is my latest image. It's oil on canvas and is 48" wide by 36" high. It is about the rhythm of life. It's about the moment after labor before a mother passes out from exhaustion. Below the image is the artspeak statement about my Luminous Pride.

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After the violence of labor, after a long journey into light, there is an afterglow of love, a luminosity of pride. It is this dramatic narrative and the musical rhythm of humanity that I attempt to echo in the paint narrative. I’m using spiraling forms and swirling brush strokes as a motif to build a symphony around the ruddy rose color of the baby. The circular motif is inspired by the mesmerizing rhythm of Cy Twombly’s “Bacchus and painted with reverence for the work of 19th century Russian Itinerants, and the Baroque masters Hals and Rembrandt.

A rose is a symbol of new life and purity and represents the fact that a woman must lose her “flower” before she can carry a baby.

The IV provides contrast to the rose. It is a symbol of the violence of labor and serves to remind us that childbirth can be dangerous. An umbilical cord from the mother once provided nourishment to the baby, and now the IV is an umbilical cord to the mother.

This is music.

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