“The Rebellion of Eve”

In college I took two human-figure painting courses from the university artist-in-residence. Although my painting skills improved, I wasn’t immediately able to produce a work of art that I liked. I painted models in art class with oil paints, and I drew lots of pinups in pencil from Playboy magazine which I sold. But I considered all my pencil sketches and oil paintings to be mere learning exercises.

My first effort to create original art was “Blue Eve,” partially based on a magazine pinup. She had a realistic shape but with abstract coloring. The result did not satisfy me, mostly because Eve in the garden with the snake and the apple was not a very original theme.

“Blue Eve”

In When God Was a Woman, Merlin Stone contends that Levites created the biblical myth of Eve in Eden to debunk the myths of the ancient Goddess whom, according to the Bible, many Hebrew women continued to worship. The Levites felt that if large numbers of women worshipped the Goddess, they threatened the patriarchal power structure. Predynastic goddesses in Egypt were associated with a cobra which continued as a symbol of power as Egyptian dynasties evolved. The Goddess of Crete was associated with snakes, symbols of knowledge, as was Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. Devotees worshipped the Goddess in outdoor ceremonies near a sacred fig tree. Worshippers consumed the sacred fig, the flesh of the goddess, to become one with the deity.

To debunk the goddess religion, the Levites wrote a creation myth with a male creator instead of a goddess creator. In Eden, the tree of knowledge, the fruit, and the snake were all symbols of the goddess religion. Consuming the fruit results in eviction from the garden, a punishment which the Levites intended to symbolize Divine displeasure of Goddess worship. So I imagined that if Eve became a feminist, she would rebel.

“East of Eden”

Over the decades, I created several interpretations of Eve, Adam, and Eden. In “East of Eden,” I hung the apple eaters amidst the junk of the consumer society.

Inspired by the Willendorf Venus and the Easter Island sculpted heads, I created a primitive Eve and Adam. The Garden of Eden is one of my favorite myths.