This is a really early painting of mine. It hasn't seen the light of day until now because it belonged to my father - the only reason I got it back was because he died last September. Most people think it shows the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, which is partly correct because I did have a passionate love affair with them for a while. However, the major influence for my early work as a painter was Botticelli.
When I paint mythological subjects they never turn out the way that mainstream culture would depict them. Somehow in my hands, as I am putting the image together, things get shifted around. Not necessarily in a compositional sense - that has been a more recent passion - but in the sense of the narrative and even the symbols and what they really convey. This painting is one perfect example.
I never bought the Old Testament myth about Eve - it really annoyed me. Something about blaming women, particularly this one who was the mother of humanity after all, for its downfall. It does fit well with the old Jewish patriarchal view of women though. I lived with a Jewish man for 3 years and he refused to have sex with me when I was menstruating. I know many non-Jewish men would feel the same but that's the sort of stuff some modern Jews still get into. Basically they are just afraid of women and their seductive powers because of course its never their fault when they get tempted either.
And the Serpent - well who wouldn't like a snake? They are gorgeous creatures and also much maligned. Interesting that the snake is a feminine symbol associated with the Goddess, despite Freud's attempts to appropriate anything pointy as being phallic. Anyway, I thought I could at least try and clear up some of the bad press that the feminine and the snake have endured over the last few thousand years.
Result: an erotic 'feminist' slant on the relationship between Eve and the Serpent. The way I see it, and you don't have to look very hard to find these symbolic references, Eve is actually like Prometheus and should be applauded. She had the guts to recognise that she and Adam were living in a Fools Paradise, in ignorance. She went against God to do it and that took more balls than Adam obviously had, who was probably just having a wank under a mango tree.
She took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, like Prometheus who brought the fire of illumination to his people - except that he gets to be a hero and she gets to suffer every month and go without sex because she is unclean! I ask you - where would we be without Eve and the Serpent. Oh yeah, probably still sitting under the mango tree.
