Cassandra Minus Two

Cassandra MinusTwo owes a little to the Lion Gate at Mycenae, contrasting an abstraction from a stone structure with a floor and ceiling in rigid perspective, both surrounding a motif that represents the princess/priestess/clairvoyant Cassandra. The painting suggests the threshold in Mycenae that led to her fate. The work is playful, intentionally painterly and untidy suggesting old, unstable surfaces emphasising the threatening threshold and liminal space. The colours, not entirely randomly, were suggested by a poppy.

Note. Cassandra, a daughter of King Priam, was the prophetess who foretold the fall of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but, as she rejected him, he cursed her so that nobody would believe her.

After the fall of Troy, she was taken as a concubine by Agamemnon and, with him, she was killed by his wife, Clytemnestra.

Oil on canvas