Jocasta Three
By Susan Banks
2025
- Painting
- Spiritual & Philosophical
- Social & Political
- Greek Mythology
- Abstract Painting
- Yellows
- Purple
- Painting Process
Dimensions
60 x 60 x 4
Jocasta is an enigma, an essential but overlooked figure in the Greek tragedies that surround the Oedipus myths. When there neither history nor a definitive version of a story then the imagination can spin imprecise impressions, evoking happenings in a bronze age palace and suggestions of mysterious beliefs and rituals.
The colours reference the Bronze Age “Aegean Dyes” which gave rich yellows, purples and madders found in fragments of frescos which depict crocuses as fabric decoration. .
The peripheral motifs allude to Bronze Age ceramics.
This is a painting about paint manipulation and process as well as an abstract response to a story. Asymmetry and inconsistencies are intentional.
Bib. Three Theban Plays by Sophocles, circa 450 BCE, and Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes, 2017.
"Aegean Dyes." Expedition Magazine 58, no. 3 (January, 2017): https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/aegean-dyes/
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