Fine Art
1st in Faces of Eden Series
Genesis 3:1-6
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman,”Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” And the woman said to the serpent,” We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,neither shall you touch it,lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,knowing good and evil.So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise,she took of its fruit and ate…
The First Tear of God is the name of the first of eight in the Faces of Eden series. Reading through the first few chapters of Genesis I saw how everything God made was good. He says so in the first chapter. He also says,”Behold,I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth,and every tree with seed in it’s fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every birds of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth,everything that has the breathe of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. Genesis 1:29-30
Eve was perfect in every way. Imagine never aging, neither mentally or physically? Never having a want in the world.Never surrendering to that gnawing feeling of finally achieving or acquiring what ever it was that you desperately fought for in this life only to find yourself grappling for the next “experience” before the former even begins. Never experiencing a failing relationship or losing a job. Never having to find a cure for cancer because it doesn’t exist. I would not be walking down the streets of Portland and seeing all the drug addiction that is essentially death on an installment plan. We fight to get our parents attention as a baby. We fight to be loved as a child, by anyone. We fight to be accepted as teenagers, by our accomplishments or lack of. We fight to go to college to get a degree. We fight to get a job to pay off the degree that we are now not using because we are fighting for the person we actually wanted to be and we don’t want to be who “they” wanted us to be. Our hospitals would not be evicting patients because they lost the fight for better health insurance because in Eve’s world God was the health plan. We have are in a battle from the moment we come out screaming and bloody to the moment we lie down in defeat. Into a grave that we have to fight to pay for.
The girl in my painting still has the breath of innocence on her but is showing the signs of life’s fire. She is mischievous and beautiful with a feeling of manipulation. All strategies used in war. I left her skin gray to depict a feeling of death and her hand almost lifeless from the never ceasing clawing at the canvas that we call life...living.
Imagine. Imagine being God and giving your child everything she would ever need or want but because of a lack of faith she bartered with the devil. Her freedom for a life of captivity. She believed the lie that if “I only had that…then I could achieve this…then I could buy that…so I would be accepted by him…and included by them…so I could love myself.”
I believe this is the first tear of God.