The Song of Songs

My long time blogger friend, Jackie, at the blog Smoothpebble, put out a challenge called, "The Illuminated Phrase." (The link will take you to the Flickr group for this challenge.)

The parameters of this challenge were wide open. Basically, you can use any media, but somehow you must use words in the piece.

Since I was also challenged by my Italian blogger friend, Celita, to create an artist trading card illustrating "stress", I decided to combine the two challenges.

Thumbing through a book of poetry, I came upon "The Song of Songs," from the Bible. Immediately I thought of Celita. She is a young mother and a woman of strong faith. Instead of illustrating how I deal with stress, as the challenge directed, I imagined how Celita dealt with stress. Painted on top of the poem, I painted a woman sowing her troubles to the wind, or lifting her troubles to the Lord.

The poem is seen by some as an erotic poem of a woman written to her husband. Others see the poem as an allegory written by the Lord to the children of Israel. Either way, Celita has a devout love of both her faith and her family. This piece is an illustration of that devotion.