acrylic and emulsion paint and paper on glass 23 x 10cm 2023

DIgital Print The meadow of my childhood

One of the most completely described holy sites in classical literature is that invoked by Euripides in his play Hippolytus, Hippolytus says to Artemis through the medium of her statue in the grove,

I have brought you this green crown,

goddess, fresh from the scene

where I spliced its flowers together,

a meadow as virginal as you are,

where no shepherd would think it wise

to pasture his animals, a perfect field

no iron blade has yet cut down.

Only the bees looking for flowers in spring

go freely through its cool grass.

Its water flows from the goddess

Restraint, who not only

leads in the rivers herself 

but keeps the place a special preserve

for those whom modesty enters at birth,

the instinctively good –

these may pick what they will,

but the vulgar are barred from the meadow.

Now, blest lady, take this, embellish

Your gold hair – it comes from a faithful hand.

In this famous passage Euripides describes a place sacred to Artemis, ‘an inviolate and inviolable virgin,’ and ‘(a) feeling for virgin nature with meadows, groves and mountains, which is as yet barely articulated elsewhere, begins to find form…