Treasure

Artwork Info

• Year: 2013
• Medium: Photo Manipulation, Digital Painting.
• Style: Mythological Surreal Digital Art
• Size:  50×50 inches (127×127 cms).
• Model: Deposit Photos.

“Treasure” is a portrait of Penelope, one of the characters from Homer’s “Odyssey”. She was the queen of Ithaca and is known for her unbreakable fidelity to her husband, Odysseus, absent for 20 years. She develops diverse strategies to avoid marrying to any of her suitors in her husband’s abscence, being the most notable one the weaving of a shroud that she would undo every night night for years, despite telling her suitors she would marry one of them once the fabric was finished.

Artist’s statement

I wanted to break with the sterotype of the ever-waiting bride and elude the usage of any direct iconography from the original myth. I think she needed to love herself and break free from the boundaries of her marriage to a forever absent husband. My goal was to represent the idea of true love, but not by Roman standards of fidelity and chastity to a man who’s never there.

Instead, I turned Penelope into a tree, rooted to the ground and waiting forever with no choice to escape or to be herself. Love is represented not by a man, not by a heart, but by something more abstract but full of meaning: the symbol of infinity or lemniscate. She sees her reflect in the bubble that contains the symbol, and realizes that love has no beginning and no end and it’s and endless development. Her new found love for her own beign melts the winter snows and brings springtime to the scenery of the artwork, allowing a rebirth of the character that will be able to fly away as the birds coming from the cage hidden in her branches.

“Treasure” is a reminder to love ourselves before any other person, because only our own sense of growth can melt the snow of solitude. That knowledge is the real treasure, even if we don’t practice it that much: to find ourselves in the mirror.

Check also my work “Blossom” to see a variation of this same idea on a darker note.