Mother of Compassion

I'm immensely fond of this piece, which I created for a class with the incomparable Deborah Rockman. It's a large mixed-media drawing on paper, and if I had the skill I'd make it into a stained glass window and install it in my shower. (Just as well since I rent so it'd have to be hanging, and that's just dangerous.)

click image to enlarge

It was a fine art class, so we were required to write up a little artist's statement for every drawing. I entitled this Guan Shi Yin (Mother of Compassion), and quoted the Four Noble Truths on the statement, under which I wrote:

The phrase “tree of knowledge of all good and evil” is potentially a merism: a figure of speech utilizing two extremes to indicate an all-encompassing range. Thus, the tree’s knowledge was complete, perfect, Godlike. Through her desire for the fruit of all knowledge, Eve brought about the fall of mankind and the birth of suffering. However, in the same moment she won for mankind the means to escape suffering, through self awareness and the will to follow the Eightfold Path.

Gyan and Varada mudra indicate the root of knowledge and limitless, welcoming compassion. Through the attainment of perfect knowledge and awakening, Eve embodies Guan Shi Yin, bodhisattva called Mother of Compassion.

Yow, that's good reading. Asked today, I would say that this piece is a reaction to the typically negative interpretation of women in Abrahamic scripture. I appropriated the iconography of Guan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion who is often portrayed as a woman, in an attempt to temper the image of Eve as a shamed sinner. Eve is mother to us all, and we should treat her with a little more respect.