2012 • 36″ x 36″
acrylic, spray paint, silk on panel
This is a commissioned piece painted for a collector who enjoyed paisley silks and the casting of Jungian projections of witch and virgin upon a woman at different times for the same reasons. She was looking for an ironic virgin. I think the source of virgin birth myths is itself ironic:
Holy Virgin was the title of harlot-priestesses of Ishtar (and) Asherah. The title didn’t mean physical virginity; it meant simply “unmarried.” The function of such ‘holy virgins’ was to dispense the Mother’s grace through sexual worship; to heal; to prophesy; to perform sacred dances; to wail for the dead; and to become Brides of God. The Hebrews called the children of these priestesses bathur, which meant literally “virgin-born” as in those children who were born of the holy harlot-priestesses of the temple. The Hellenic world had no equivalent to the bizarre rituals of Ishtar, and mistranslated and misunderstood the literal Hebrew’s bathur as parthenioi, also “virgin-born” but in the sense of physical, not spiritual, virginity.
She provided the paisley silk which ties in with Persian and Zoroastrian motifs as well. My collector sees a virgin she can relate to in this piece while I see a busted myth.
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