The Brides of Salt — While They Are Becoming

The first layers are beginning to take shape. Bare canvas still shows through in places; figures are gathering

The Keeper of Salt is finding her place, and the landscape and symbols around them are only just beginning to speak to one another.

There is so much still to come... The finer details, the words and fragments of poetry, the veils, the gold leaf — and all of those small pieces of magic that arrive much later, when the bones of the painting are finally in place.

The veil is the river…The veil is the manuscript…The veil is the genealogy

The Keeper of Salt - early detail

This is a large work, both physically and in what I’m asking it to hold: brides and mourners, memory, mercy, loss, keeping and witness.

I never entirely know what a painting of this scale will become when I begin it. That is part of the reason for sharing it here now, unfinished — while there are still spaces of untouched canvas and the possibility of changing direction.

The beginning to facial detail

And because The Brides of Salt is such a large and richly layered work, I’m planning something a little different once she is complete. Selected details from the finished canvas will become a small collection of A4 art posters — intimate fragments of the larger painting, each able to stand as a work in its own right.

I’ll share some of those details here as they emerge, along with more of the words, symbols and stories held within the painting.

For now, here she is — somewhere between the bare canvas and the magic still to come.