His Face in Her Tear.
By: Lodi Posted on: March 31, 2013
Every inch of this cube-shaped room is covered in the purest, ivory-white limestone. Each slab has been so masterfully cut and laid that the cracks between them are only visible upon closer inspection. A glow globe fills the room with clear, crisp daylight.
A huge circular canvas has been hung from the eastern wall. Shadows cast themselves mournfully across the secluded mountain-scape depicted there, their vale of grief spun by the light of a red and Vengeful moon. Its fullness hangs heavy at the central apex of the painting, a lone midnight cloud drifting across its sour features. Achaea's rings streak across the star-studded firmament beneath it, their outermost edge cast into crimson droplets of blood by the celestial body’s illumination.
Nearer the painting's bottom, the moon's woeful face is reflected into glistening aqua-distortion across a tiny mountain stream's rippled surface. The watercourse meanders sluggishly up through a barren plateau until it reaches the image's centre. Here, it tumbles away over a cliff edge within a soft haze of mist.
Unforgiving walls of jagged rock ominously rise heavenwards to either side of the composition. Their claustrophobic presence attributes to the painting a disturbing undercurrent of subconscious anxiety. The moon and stars are framed between their gnarled ascents, caged in by the Oppressive burden of bleakest grief.
A lone figure sits hunched over the stream’s edge. Ourania, Goddess of the Moon, has reached forward, drawing forth a cupped handful of water in a desperate attempt to hold Her murdered Daughter for one last time. Yet the icy mountain liquid simply trickles sadly away through Her fingers. With the glazed expression of soul-destroyed loss, Lady Ourania watches the water as it slowly disappears...
She is Suffering as only mothers can for the death of their child. Her face is paler than usual and its luminous quality heavily dulled. The artist has captured Her in one of those desolate moments of grief, where hysterical weeping has subsided for a time, leaving but a hollow, aching emptiness in its wake. She appears lost, knocked down low by the emotional contradiction reeling violently through Her broken heart.
Where is Her Daughter? One moment She was there, then the next...
Truth is often a bitter herb to swallow.
One single tear slides down Her cold cheek. Lord Apollyon's face is depicted reflected upon its surface. He glares up eagerly at Lady Moon; His wounded eye smouldering away in malevolent rapture. Painted with the utmost delicacy to detail, the artist has laboured over this depiction, attributing a deeper and more sublime level of realism than in any other part of the painting.
For Suffering affects ALL; from the lowliest worms to even the Gods themselves, none can escape its multiversal grasp...