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Completed in summer of 2002; brush and ink on bristol board. The Stone Mother is loosely based on a type of fairy tale classified as AT-510A; in this tale, a dead mother advises her daughter through the form of a magical object or supernatural being -- a doll, a tree, an animal. In one version, Vasilisa the Fair, the mother's counsel leads to the stepmother being burned to death.I wanted to raise the question of whether the dead necessarily have our best interests at heart. The tree that bleeds and speaks, of course, is from Dante's Grove of the Suicides: I snapped the tiny branch of a great thornbush and its trunk cried: "Why are you tearing me?" And when its blood turned dark around the wound --Inferno, tr. Mark Musa |