Flesh of My Flesh
Flesh of My Flesh, oil on canvas, 18”x24” © D. Yael Bernhard 2024
This is the second version of the painting featured last week, Earth Mother ver. 2. In that post I showed a pencil sketch and a charcoal drawing that served as studies for both final paintings. This one is based more on the pencil sketch, showing the mother embodied in a way that is less abstract and more representational of human anatomy. What I wanted here was not to show the spiraling design of Earth Mother, but a tender relationship between the individual mother and child.
Gone are the roots of the previous version, replaced instead with simple gradients. Both the mother’s dress and the background are painted in dark teal. Using the same color for both subject and background is new to me, a technique I’ve admired in many other artists (consider Picasso’s “Blue Period”). The subject emerges from a sameness that surrounds and offsets it in a subtle way. This is true of both mother and background, and child and mother.
As I wrote last week, the core concept of both images is one of self-healing, or self-mothering. As I stepped back from the first painting, it came to me that mother and child were of one flesh, and that I could depict them that way. Rather than nursing her daughter as a separate being, the child emerges from her mother’s breast as her own deeply familiar, inseparable inner child. Yet the baby reaches for her mother’s lips, exploring with tiny fingers for the first time. And this loving mother enfolds her child with patience and total acceptance.
In creating this image and the last one, I have painted two icons of maternal nurturing, stripped of detail and increasingly simplified into essential forms. Self and other is the underlying theme, manifesting as the tension between the oneness and separateness of mother and child.
As the mother of three adult children, I find myself striving to mother my own inner child in this world of uncertainty and imperfection. As I age, I become both stronger in conviction and more fragile. How do I give myself the qualities I brought to bear in mothering my own little children? Our inner ministrations begin in the imagination, where art is conceived and gestates. In bringing forth an image, I’m also laboring to birth something new within myself.
May whatever emerges be tenderly held, protected and fed, to grow into a strong and independent consciousness. That’s my prayer for myself and others – for every little baby, both symbolic and real.
As in art, so in life.
This painting is for sale. Please inquire for more information if you’re interested.
A good week to all!
D. Yael Bernhard
https://dyaelbernhard.com
Have you seen my other Substack, The Art of Health? In addition to being a visual artist, I’m also a certified integrative health & nutrition coach with a lifelong passion for natural food cooking and herbal medicine. Now in its second year, this illustrated newsletter explores cutting-edge concepts of nutrition. I strive to make relevant information clear and accessible, and to anchor essential health concepts in unique images. Check it out, and if you like it, please subscribe and help spread the word. Your support keeps my work going!