“Dark Behind It Rose the Forest”
Added 2025-07-14 11:56:54 +0000 UTC“Dark Behind a Rose the Forest” is an intimate, fiery little oil painting I made for my March 2025 exhibition at Half Gallery in New York City. Painted with transparent pigments, it captures a scene both earthy and luminous—a nude mother laughing with her baby, bathed in a glow that feels like firelight. Darkness envelopes the space around them—suggesting the forest. A canine figure rests on the mother’s shoulder, peering down at the child, sharing in the quiet wonder of the moment.
This piece was inspired by The Song of Hiawatha, the great American epic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—a poem I was raised on and now read to my own children. The painting draws specifically from the passages about Nokomis, the wise grandmother who raises the infant Hiawatha after his mother’s death. Longfellow’s Hiawatha, first published in 1855, was a cultural milestone—an attempt to elevate Native American mythology into the realm of poetic epic, written in a rhythmic, chant-like meter that echoed ancient oral traditions. While the poem romanticizes and simplifies Indigenous culture through a 19th-century lens, it also introduced generations of Americans to a new kind of heroic narrative rooted in this continent’s landscape and legacy.
In making this painting, I wanted to honor that spirit of fierce maternal tenderness—something ancient and modern, sacred and raw. It’s a small offering to the power of poetry, memory, and the strange beauty of raising children in a chaotic world.
Comments
I actually had no reference for this dog, it was made up out of memory, it’s kind of like a greyhound meets a dragon or something, I’m experimenting with breaking away from references, as sometimes they feel too anecdotal, and memory can help create an odd naïvety in the work
colleen barry
2025-07-17 10:06:12 +0000 UTCI was thinking about your use of archetypes. The madonna and child, it always works. What's unusual about this piece is that it has a sincere feeling of love and delight in it — madonnas are often depicted holding their children as if they were vases. I am struck by the dog you include. It's not the kind of dog you have. You've been painting these wild canines — wolves, African wild dogs — but here with the child you have a sighthound, a sort of greyhound. These are dogs that express themselves through proximity, by leaning against you. They are not guard dogs; rather, they are very sensitive, gentle and intelligent. So even within the archetype of the canine there is a huge range. I was thinking how your choice of a dog at all and this kind of dog in particular connects the woman and child to nature, but in a very gentle, wise way. "Dark Behind it Rose the Forest," I live in a place where the forest rises dark and protective around the house. It is a vision of nature that is enveloping and not threatening, which is counter to most of the tradition of how nature is treated in American painting. This painting is a place where humans and nature are at peace. A wonderful painting.
Shelah Horvitz
2025-07-14 12:17:44 +0000 UTC
