SOLD - There is a place in the recesses of the in-between where live the Sanguine Ferns. Fueled by all-encompassing love, they practice Reiki on the dysmorphic. Call them kind, cruel, passionate, frightening; only truth seekers may lie in their beds. They will eat you alive and spit out shreds of what once you were. Lying beneath their leaves in suspended animation, one will die and re-assimilate. This world is beautiful and terrifying. Hidden in the black moon’s darkness, the ferns’ leaves tower over other creatures. They are home to chrysalises hanging, golden, from the leaves, exploding at the full moon to send their hatchlings, the Sorrow Moths, flying free on quests for tranquility. The Sanguine Ferns are the Sorrow Moths’ keepers. The moths’ wings are fraile and brittle. Most plummet to the ground, like Icarus, when the wind grasps them in its fingers. For every wing broken, one is stolen. Many Moths of Sorrow cast their eyes upwards to the moon, hands in prayer. They pray to Hecate and Cecelia and Luke and Catherine and Valentine and Yahweh and Gaia and Universe. They pray to all who listen. Return their stolen wings; wings stolen by those who glimpsed the flickers before they fell and stripped the landlocked bare. All of the Sanguine Ferns know what flickers is beyond the moths’ reach. The blood contained within the ferns’ leaves feed the Sorrow Moths well. They are protected while they pine for what they cannot have. They are powerless and the Sanguine Ferns pity them. The queen of the Sanguine Ferns emanates gold and violet. She is forgiving and benevolent. The ferns watch her colours and monitor them as bees do their queen. Her colours are crucial, as she is their sun. If the queen flickers the ferns adjust her aura so that all is at ease in their world. Those that come to the world of the Sanguine Ferns are fearless. To enter their world is to pass through the lightning struck tower, to look the owl in the eye, to cross the River Styx. To enter their world is to repudiate beliefs and opinions. To enter their world is to allow destruction and removal of all one knows as one knows it. To enter the world of the Sanguine Ferns is to be turned to dust. Those that return from the land of the Sanguine Ferns enter the world they once knew as a reborn soul. As carnivorous as they may seem, the ferns cannot digest the pure soul. They draw out negativity as mosquitoes do blood. Their blood is toxic as it courses with spiritual poison. Their leaves are stunning, full and lush. Blood-like pearls of dew drip to the ground. Fall into the leaves, onto the beds of the Sanguine Ferns. They will caress and lull you to sleep for days and months and years. They will suck you dry. And when rain falls upon your dust, the Sorrow Moths and the gazelles will lift you to see the moon, surrounded by rings, and your heart will love again.

Nine panels, handstretched and traditionally primed on heavy-duty stretchers create the world of the ferns. Each is decorated with combinations of gold or black embroidery, 23k gold leaf, metal leaf, and insect wings. The painting is mounted on a handstained and finished wooden panel.

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