Eurybia's Harvest

I'm gonna' be real with you guys: this year's 365 project has died on the altar of Starting My Own Business.  But I'm okay with that- I made real progress in the nearly 6 months that I stuck with it, and since that was the whole point... go me!  I'll pick it back up again in the future, when things calm down, but in the meantime I miss blogging, and I wanted to share with you one piece- a finished piece, no less- that I did between the last post and this one (not quite three months...  ::sigh::).

It was a commission for an old WFR buddy; he wanted something special for his wife's birthday, so we chatted for a while about her and her life experiences thus far (and his budget), and I came up with the following:

Eelmaid on a Mission

I am super pleased with it, and became even more so once he shared a photo of how he had it matted and framed, which, for some strange reason, I am unable to share.  Oh well you'll just have to take my word for it: it's awesome.  (Dark blue mat, distressed white frame)  No more excuses for not updating the blog!  Instead, here's a (redacted) artist's statement:

Eurybia's Harvest

When WFR FRIEND gave me some background on WFR WIFE so I could better create a piece for her, I knew almost immediately that I wanted pearls in the image, to represent her ability to keep going in the face of extreme adversity, and turn it into something amazing and beautiful.  Beyond that initial impulse, I took further inspiration from the Titan Eurybia, who is considered a goddess of mastery over the seas (an excellent representation of WFR WIFE's vocation in marine biology).  Moreover, Eurybia is described by Hesiod as having "a heart of flint within her", which struck me as a perfect metaphor for the endurance WFR WIFE's heart has had to show, both literally and figuratively.  The flint knife (used to harvest the non-nacreous scallop pearls) is a nod to that particular detail.

Titans are generally considered more "monstrous" than the traditional Greek pantheon, so I knew I wanted to do something not-quite-human with the portrait.  Mermaid was the obvious choice, but mermaid felt too conventional for a woman of WFR WIFE's eclectic tastes: thus my decision to represent WFR WIFE/Eurybia as an eelmaid.

The placing and number of the harvested pearls is a deliberate celebration of WFR WIFE's dissertation concerning the reproductive lives of scallops, and the adventures she had along the way to earning it.

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So there you have it.

In unrelated news, I have a one-shot game coming up this weekend, for which I've created an entirely new character (a Ranger) and of course I've also written a little backstory for her.  I'll be sharing that in the days to come (as well as other tidbits), so hold on to your knickers: this radio silence is over.