Eve's Journey

Eve’s Journey. 

75 x 95 cms

This Willow-charcoal drawing highlights art historical and Christian narratives of
sexism, blaming, shaming and subjugating women. The Classical Nude and Still Life
traditions are appropriated and revalued within the art historical context of
Contemporary Realism. and Contemporary Still Life. Given a history of biblical, religious,
social and cultural sexism, misogyny, abuse and educational exclusion of women, this
work appropriates tradition to acknowledge the complexity of our European and
Christian artistic and religious heritage.

In the foreground the contemporized ‘Classical Nude’ female body as the biblical
conflicted Eve is embedded in a roughly textured, symbolic, snake/animal patterned
landscape and books. The title of one book is Eve’s Pilgrimage; A Woman’s Quest for the
City of God by Catholic convert and Feminist Theologian Tina Beattie. This author
journeys through Rome, encountering works of art from Creation in the Sistine Chapel
to the Fall, Baptism and Resurrection in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. Beattie
addresses concerns of violence, power, social injustice, and motherhood in her book. In
the drawing the female body as Eve, is hemmed in by apples, snake and Patriarch God,
in the Garden of Eden. These artistic and biblical images and symbols were used
historically to justify subjugating and punishing women highlighting the conflicted
emotions women experience grappling with faith and feminism. This work is inspired
by Beattie’s search for an answer to the struggle of being ‘a Catholic and a
feminist...without tearing oneself apart in the process.’