Her breast is sunrise, illuminating the ship that has survived the storm,
warming the sails above the deep, cold ocean.
Stella Maris is Latin for Star of the Sea. It was one of the titles given to Mary within the Roman Catholic tradition, the sacred feminine for seas metaphorical or salty.
This painting began as an explosion of light and warmth at Easter last year. But every morning after that the condensation trails in the flight paths over my home merged together, so that the sunlight was dimmed, and that effulgence of warmth that makes your insides sing and all the cells in your body jostle to come to the front and smile up at all the golden light...
that was missing from the summer here. I have never seen so much mould on my poor vegetables in the garden. And the painting waited for the sunlight to reach us in vain. I read about the condensation trails and the HAARP experiments being conducted with the upper atmosphere, and the insufficient regard given by climate people to the matter of precipitation, despite the fact that drought is causing great hardship worldwide.
Then the painting began to change again and became what it is.
Lately I came upon another window of understanding of our feminine nature and the story of a particular familiar mother and her infant, as seen through Moslem eyes, in a film made recently in Iran:
Link to an index of Polish icons of the Madonna and Child.
Stella Maris © Morag Emmerson 2007. oil on linen canvas, 26" x 32".
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