The Dead Guard Our Seeds

Work in progress today. Inspired by the pagan believe of Poland that the dead rest in the Earth guarding our seeds. In the spring and fall, food and gifts were brought to the graves of the ancestors to please them, to avoid suffering bad crops and barren soil.

Hungry Grass

 

Just finishing up work on Hungry Grass.   In Irish mythology, hungry grass (also known as fairy grass) is a patch of cursed grass. Anyone walking on it was doomed to perpetual and insatiable hunger. If a body was being ferried to a burial ground and momentarily set down to rest en route, that patch of grass would become cursed. Alternately, a patch of ground would become cursed if it were over an unshriven corpse, one that had not received absolution before death. Sometimes it was detached entirely from funerary custom and thought to have been planted by fairies.

This is an 8" x 10" original painting. Acrylic on acid free paper, illustrating one conception of the Hungry Grass mythology. The cursed victim stands on the back of a skeleton, unfurling from the skull is a banner announcing "Esurio" which is Latin for "to hunger". The victim claws at a cloud of imagined various victuals in a work inspired by medieval illumination and children's story book illustration. It's humorous and a bit creepy.

You can find it and similar works at My Good Babushka. Art. Needlework, Jewelry

Hungry Grass

Illustration inspired by the Irish folk belief in Hungry Grass, a phenomenon whereby a person who stands in the grass where a body was momentarily laid while it was being ferried to the burial ground will be gripped by an insatiable hunger. Here is my victim standing atop the bones of the deceased. A banner comes from between the skull's teeth with the proclamation "Esurio" which is Latin for "to hunger".
I was inspired by illustrations in children's books, I can't think of any one specifically at the moment, but I remember illustrations of food in children's books to be particularly glistening and lurid. I wanted to impart that sensation of surreal unreal "tastiness" for lack of a better description.
You can see the finished Hungry Grass painting at My Good Babushka. Art, Chainmaille Jewelry, and Needlework.

The Hungry Grass

Illustration inspired by the Irish folk belief in Hungry Grass, a phenomenon whereby a person who stands in the grass where a body was momentarily laid while it was being ferried to the burial ground will be gripped by an insatiable hunger.
 Here is my victim standing atop the bones of the deceased. A banner comes from between the skull's teeth with the proclamation "Esurio" which is Latin for "to hunger".
It's sort of a stylistic mash-up between medieval illumination and a children's fable illustration.The finished work, Hungry Grass, is at My Good Babushka. Art. Jewelry. Needlework.

The Hungry Grass

Illustration inspired by the folk belief in Hungry Grass, a phenomenon whereby a person who stands in the grass where a body was momentarily laid while it was being ferried to the burial ground will be gripped by an insatiable hunger.
 Here is my victim standing atop the bones of the deceased. A banner comes from between the skull's teeth with the proclamation "Esurio" which is Latin for "to hunger". My victim claws at a thought bubble of imagined victuals but can never be sated. Ooooooh scary! And a little bit funny, I think.
You can see the finished painting, Hungry Grass, at My Good Babushka. Painting, Needlework, Chainmail.