Work in progress
First of all.
I hope 2012 is off to a beautiful start for all of you!
Which means inspiring, creative,
and with your muses present and lending a helping hand!
So, I have a long way to go on this.
I became even more convinced when I snapped a pic in bad light
and put it on the computer. Funny how you see things differently
on a computer screen.
This was going to be my entry at Inspiration Avenue for
the Something old, Something new challenge.
(2 challenges ago)
What is old is that I always start something ambitious
with only a day or so to complete it.
What was new is that this is a very different size for me
(12 x 24 as opposed to my usual 8 x 10's)
So those things combined meant there wasn't a chance in hell
I would get it finished in time. Ha. It's still not finished.
Alright, enough whinging and whining,
here is the story.
I modeled her after John Waterhouse's Psyche painting.
I love John Waterhouse ~ his figures look so graceful and solid,
like they could walk right off the canvas.
I thought this painting
was Pandora, but apparently it is Psyche.
And this
is Pandora.
I am still calling mine Pandora.
I don't see anywhere in the story of Psyche where she has a box.
According to http://www.pantheon.org
this is the story of Psyche:
Psyche is the youngest of three daughters. She was of such extraordinary beauty that Aphrodite herself became jealous of her. The goddess then sent her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly man. She was meant to fall in love with the first man she saw, which Eros would make sure was the ugliest man on earth. However, the god himself fell in love with her when he got pricked with his own poison arrow. He visited her every night, but forbade her to see his face, so she did not know who her lover was. On her sisters' instigation she tried to discover the true identity of her beloved. When he lay asleep in her bed, she lit an oil lamp but when she bent over to see Eros' face, a drop of oil from her lamp fell on him and he awakened. When he noticed her intent, he left her. Psyche wandered the earth in search of her lover, until she was finally reunited with him. Zeus himself reunited and married the lovers.
A nice story, but where is the box??
If anyone knows, please tell me :)
and here is the story of Pandora:
Pandora was the first woman on earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create her and he did, using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many talents; Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo music, Hermes persuasion, and so forth. Hence her name: Pandora, "all-gifted". When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. With her, Pandora had a jar which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her natural curiosity, Pandora opened the jar, and all evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing which lay at the bottom, and that was Hope.
Not as nice a story, except the part about Hope.
Interesting, the parallels between this story and that of Eve...
Oh, and the stories all say Pandora had a jar, not a box.
I'm still going with a box because who ever heard of
"Pandora's Jar"?
So Happy Paint Party Friday!
And Happy 2012!
Don't forget to visit the party:
