Image of the Week: The Sleep of Trust
© D. Yael Bernhard
Here's a painting inspired by a traditional folktale retold by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her classic book "Women Who Run With the Wolves" – a collection of stories skillfully analyzed from a Jungian perspective. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Jungian psychology for its positive influence on my work. As a young artist, I was blessed with a Jungian mentor who taught me the language of dreams and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. These have woven through my art ever since, like living vines that continually branch and blossom – for this is the realm of universal experience that enables the masculine and the feminine, the primitive and the divine to emerge in my art. It's what makes multicultural illustrations accessible to readers of different backgrounds. And it's what makes this image of a sleeping woman entwined with a snake a potent symbol for so many people who have responded to it for the past 18 years.
This particular folktale originates, of all places, from the Inuit people of the far North. Though the image shows no connection to the Arctic, it was the underlying theme of the tale that sparked the idea. As the story goes, a solitary Inuit fisherman hooks from the bottom of the sea that which frightens him most – a skeleton woman, alive and hungry, who pursues him madly across the tundra. He sees her as a threat, but she offers him something precious that he cannot achieve alone: love. In order to receive this gift, the fisherman must allow himself to go to sleep in her presence – to trust her as he slips into the sea of the unconscious, so that both their hearts may be transformed.
To surrender to a state of innocent trust in the face of that which frightens us seems part of a universal journey of healing and awakening. In an effort to internalize the story’s teaching, I decided to re-envision the core dynamic with a different creature that frightens so many people: a snake. Imagine laying down to sleep and trusting this creature to crawl all over you. As it does so, every place it crosses the woman's body changes color, making it appear to be embedded in her flesh, and symbolizing the transformative effect of their interaction. Each section of the snake has different colors, which together create a pattern that vividly contrasts the woman’s monochromatic figure. I don't use orange or red too often, but this painting called for these colors. The background, too, transforms as a gradient from top to bottom.
I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, but I still relate to them as a powerful symbol. Perhaps what's most frightening about them is that they're strange, unknown, and have a mysterious way of moving. Wouldn't it be nice if all our fears were just that – something unfamiliar that we don't understand?
I wish. The truth is that even though I created this woman, I don't know what enables her to sleep like this. But sleep she does, and the snake is not hurting her – trust me.
The Sleep of Trust is painted in gouache on dark brown paper. The original is not much bigger than what you see here. It can be ordered as a signed poster from my webstore.
A good week to all –
D Yael Bernhard