Oil on canvas, ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

To Have and to Hold is a figurative landscape where the human form is fractured, shimmering and multifaceted as if existing in a suspended space and time or another realm, in a Renaissance landscape setting.

The young woman is a subject I am revisiting from some time ago as her demeanour always intrigues.  Her enigmatic presence creates inner dialogue, but this time I have transported her into a Renaissance landscape, an unfamiliar landscape befitting her mysterious persona.

An old saying, To Have and to Hold has reference to so many aspects in our lives.  The girls youth and the manner she clutches her pet has reference to holding onto innocence, or is it just a symbolic metaphor that denotes to a physical embrace of a couple.  To receive without reservation the total self gift of the other, but in this sense it is not a statement of ownership but rather a promise of unconditional acceptance. It could also refer to self awareness, self possession and acceptance of the self.

The soft accents on the skin tones of the subject is also to symbolise the fragility of human nature and the impermanence of our being.  How in the timeline of this earth we are all too soon just memories within the landscape and the importance of what we need to hold onto and what we need to let go.

This painting is expressively painted in oils on canvas where the strong illuminated colours of the background envelope the figure as if presenting as an apparition.