Shelagh : Paradise Garden (1997 - 2007) /
Shelagh : Paradies Garten (1997 - 2007)

36 panels of oil/tempera on canvas on wood
163 x 124  including frame

For sale

Hans's comments on the background to the picture:-

Background
The idea is to create a Trilogy of Womanhood -  The Young Woman “Rosie” completed 1997, The Middle Aged Woman “Shelagh” completed 2007, and The Old Woman which is not yet started. The ancient Goddesses are often depicted in threes • the Fates, the Graces • as is the lifecycle  - Youth, Middle and Old age.

The idea of the 36 panels came about to break the painting into a series of interconnecting stills a bit like a film, also alluding to our fragmented life and the effort of the individual to see the whole.

These 36 plywood panels are covered with canvas and were painted in oil/tempera over a period of about 10 years on and off.

Central Section
On the top is heaven or paradise and below hell.

“Paradise”, the meadow on the bed is based on a 15th century painting “The Garden of Paradise” by an unknown artist from the Upper Rhine in the Staedel Museum Frankfurt. The enclosed flower filled garden is here transformed into a bed of flowers. All the figures from the original painting appear here: a woman drawing water, someone picking apples, a woman reading, a woman teaching a child how to make music, and a monkey with an angel and two men in conversation around a tree.

In this paradise garden sleeps Shelagh. In the two panels above her head there are two apsaras and the Indian god of love Kama rides his parrot and takes aim to shoot the sleeping Shelagh with an arrow of love from his bow of bees. The headboard depicts a Rajastan landscape and another universe's paradise bed floats off into the distance beyond.

“Hell” exists below this bed. The panel below the left side of the bed depicts a well know homeless man in my home town of Ruesselsheim. He restlessly moves with two suitcases around the town since many years. He makes our internal homelessness visible. He dreams of the eternal dancers above him and the actors of the commedia dell'arte dancing on that tightrope. Below them Krishna, as both young man and baby, and his brother Balaram • visual symbols of the love of God • view the race for “more of everything”, the supersize me culture. Here the men are separated from the women by their obsessive fascination with the race and its winners and losers. The women are disconnected from their men frustrated, sad, traumatised and helpless they eat to compensate.

Top Row
This section was painted first. It starts as a gallery of goddesses.
1st panel top left panel shows from left to right Uma the first wife of Shiva, Hera the wife of Zeus and then Sita the wife of Rama. All these women had a lot of trouble and strife with their husbands.
2nd panel shows Saraswati Indian goddess of art and music, also the wife of Brahma, with her vina and goose.
3rd panel is Demeter the Goddess of the natural world with her daughter Persephone. Persphone was forced into marriage with Hades the God of the underworld.
4th panel shows the Three Fates who are seeing the future.
5th panel is Mrs Simon (my first wife Cesca's mother) with a young Cesca. Here showing how the line of archetype of mothers comes down to earth and into my life.
The final 6th panel shows the adult Cesca as the married woman and mother with our son Pryderi.

The Left-hand Side down
The middle three panels were done during my first cancer treatment and show The Fisher King from Parsifal and the search for the Grail, the fish with the apple an old Celtic symbol of the salmon who cracks the hazelnut and reaches the sweet kernel of wisdom, and Jonah who jumps out of the mouth of the whale • being through death and reborn. By working with these concepts a rebirth and a re-evaluation of life happened to me and in the next panel down a kind of baptism and a definite move towards a deeper understanding. The final panel on this side is the new beginning with a new muse Shelagh, washing up - chopping wood, carrying water the tasks to sustain daily life -and a sense of wholeness again.

The Right-hand Side down
The middle three panels depict the struggle of woman in our European culture to establish an individual self outside marriage and the raising of children. Here begins a search for true identity by looking at women who live in less fragmented societies and trying to emulate and understand what needs to be adapted or changed.  The panel below these three depict a dream that Cesca told me. She is free of all marriage bounds and looking for a new life in Brighton shortly after this we separated.

Bottom right panel
This shows Medusa the much marginalised Goddess and one of the three Gorgons and associated with the Keepers of the Apples of Hesperides. She is depicted here as a woman of flesh and bones together with her colourless archetypal self. The two are entwined with a single snake and laugh at the whole play of humanity.

Copyright Hans Diebschlag All Rights Reserved