A Study of Eve: An Art Series in Watercolor
While many pondered the gifts of Christ this holiday season, I found myself particularly glued to Eve. Honestly, I think it's very much a product of the pain that women are feeling after the 2024 presidential election. Everything I've read since the election has brought me to the same conclusion: The United States is still too sexist to elect a woman president.
““Let me ask a question to present day: how the hell did Eve get all the damn blame?””
I’ll be the first to admit that neither of our most promising options for a woman president have been my personal choice, but this election was different. This year, as I see it, we had two options: imperfect sanity with a female with a “boring” track record OR complete chaos with an aged male with a track record for unethical behavior.
I grew up in the Bible Belt, in a largely Southern Baptist community and church. So, this surprises me very little, however, I had hoped that things would’ve improved more than they clearly have. I remember it was very commonly stated by all sexes that women shouldn’t run for president and that if they did, they’d never win. Usually, they would then mock how “emotional” or, even more often, how “hormonal” women are. There was likely a time when I dutifully agreed when someone else stated it in my presence. But even at my most devout, none of the largely anti-female speech and narrative of the Bible, nor many of its followers, ever sat right with me.
So, why all the hostility towards women? There’s one, very simple answer: Eve.
What Does the Bible Say?
About Eve, specifically? Turns out, not much. Eve is only mentioned by name FOUR times total (Compared to Adam’s 27) in the entire Bible. In most of the story of Adam “and Eve,” she’s rarely even referred to by name, but more often as the woman or Adam’s wife. The only children of Adam that are mentioned are Cain, Abel, and Seth. All of them married and “made love to” wives who are never named or given backstory.
The gaps of time between children are unclear (though there are only 2 times the Bible explicitly stated Adam and “his wife” got it on, but it is clear that Seth was a much younger child and that Adam had Seth at the age of 130 and lived to be the age of 930… but none of those 4 mentions of Eve in the Bible answers the question I want to know: how long did Eve live?
The truth is, Genesis unfortunately makes it clear that Eve was a largely unimportant character. In fact, the more I learn about the treatment of women throughout history, I think it likely served Moses very well that women were treated as unimportant and even unclean or unworthy. No one knows who took actual pen to paper, as they say, but Moses is credited with writing the first 5 books of the Bible by pretty much everyone else in the Bible.
Whether it was Moses or not, I don’t know or really care. But it feels about as likely as just about everything else in the Bible so, sure.
How My Eve Collection Began
It all started with Eve #1, which is now part of the left half of the new “EVE.” She came to me as I was listening to the song Labour by Paris Paloma and considering the biblical character. The verses where Paris worries over her future daughter’s fate at the hands of her abusive husband proposed an interesting perspective for me. What if Eve knew exactly what she was doing when she ate from that tree? What if it was the last-ditch effort of an oppressed woman. After all, what is there to lose, if not everything? An obsession (and a playlist) grew from there and many more pieces started sprouting up over a few weeks.
Eve #1
It’s very me to obsess over subject so much that I make a themed playlist to keep myself in the right mood while I work on a project. I really like the effect of listening to this playlist as you look at the pieces I created. I find that it really encourages all kinds of different ideas about Eve and what her motives could have been. So, this feels like as good a time as any to share it with you.
Up next, my neurodivergent mind pumped out "Eve #2" and "Eve Ate." I Then began "Eden" before scribbling out "Eve #3" on printer paper during a particularly slow day.
Eve #3, again, was largely inspired by Paris Paloma’s hit song. However, even more explicitly, as I used a freeze frame from the music video for as my initial inspiration for this version of Eve. The song and music video are a masterpiece, but I especially wanted to capture a small bit of the ravenous energy at which Paris tears into the pomegranate. Click here to see what I’m talking about. However, I do want to express that Paris is not quite the Eve I envision and that she was changed to look more how I pictured her in the final copy.
Eve #4 was always meant to be beside the original in my mind. At this point, I decided that both their final homes would be in the form of a collage on canvas. I had originally planned on making the backing canvas more green and garden-like, however, by the time I'd finished this piece, my piece "Eden" was already complete. I suppose that it didn't feel as fresh to me at that point, and I worried that it wasn't true to the original 3-tone concept.
My favorite thing about “Eve Ate” is that she’s similarly colored to the original, only this time I created her entirely with the new, much nicer watercolors I’d purchased from my favorite local art store. So, I decided to stick with the original color scheme again for EVE.
Let’s Talk About Eve
EVE (final version) Watercolor, pencil, collage with paper on canvas
This work is, in many ways, a perfect summary of this series, in the biased eyes of her creator, me. She’s comprised of both my first “Eve” drawing and my last “Eve” drawing. So, she is both the first piece I started and the last piece completed. She began as an expression of my ever-growing perspective of the biblical character of Eve. As I grew up, Eve was always so demonized and criticized for her weakness. It’s funny, she never felt weak to me. She did eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but why is it such a bad thing to seek a second opinion? She was chastised for not trusting blindly in her maker.
Once, blind faith didn’t seem so strange to me. Faith wasn’t terrifying. Faith gave me a goal, something to hope for. It was everything else that I was afraid of, the big wide world, but most importantly, myself. What had the Bible taught me, if not that I am the worst, most wretched being unless I devote my entire body, mind, time, and money to God and His Church? Nothing I ever did felt like enough. I never felt Saved enough.
When I exited an even more emotionally abusive and manipulative relationship, it was so clear to me how easily I fell into his grasp because of my religion. He used it to prey on me, to keep me, to guilt me, and to change me. He used it to keep me feeling smaller than life and worthless, blessed by his very presence.
But after many years of healing, I can finally look back and see all of the parallels to abuse and manipulation all over the pages of the book I grew up on. I can feel it in my memories. A Bible was likely the first book I ever owned, and for over 20 years it ruled me, guilted me, and forced me to contort myself to a version that would be considered acceptable by my parents and church members. How quickly did Eve’s own husband turn on her when questioned by his Father? We know the answer to this one—very. What were Eve’s days like in Eden before the serpent? Unfortunately, we have no idea.
Eve #2
In this piece, I wanted to focus more on some less emotional aspects of how the perception of Eve has changed over time for me. For starters, most artwork we see generally portrays Adam, Eve, Jesus, the whole Bible cast and crew with a light complexion even though it’s essentially impossible that they would look this way. While many people are able to see these historic artworks and rationalize that this is just one artist’s perspective, that is often still the one that sticks in a person’s mind. It can make undue connections in a person’s head.
Traditionally, we also see the unnamed fruit of the tree of knowledge depicted as an apple, but this feels more like a western preoccupation with the fruit more than anything else to me. I’ve seen suggestions that pomegranates could be the fruit that grew on the tree (though if we’re to trust the Bible, we’ve lost access to the fruit). I like and ran with this idea due to the growing region of the fruit and the region where most of the Bible actually takes place, but more importantly, because of the symbolism. Pomegranates are often seen as a symbol for fertility and are an integral part of the story of Persephone, another famous mythological woman bound to her fate by marriage and fruit…
The Finale: Our Mother, Who Art on Earth
Finally, my favorite piece and the one I’m most proud of: Eden. This painting explores a world where Eve’s spirit finally rests inside a tree at the outskirts of a now barren “Eden.” This painting is very much a culmination of a story pieced together by me and inspired in some part by the linked playlist as well as the myths and legends I studied throughout my life.
I started by sketching out my Mother Tree, and then decided I wanted this painting to have a secret: the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by Sara Bareilles, Eden. I had a feeling they would likely get covered up in the process, and they did, but somehow I feel that this little secret lends strength to the piece.
In my version of her story, Eve’s spirit becomes tied to the seeds of the fruit, which eventually make their way through to the ground from whence they came. Over the years, the sapling grows and when her body passes, her soul returns to the tree. Everything she touches grows stronger and more abundant, protected by a mysterious stream. The earth outside her grassy mound is dry, barren and empty, the sky unkind. She watches as years pass and the world around her fades. Still, she waits patiently, for she knows her true time has yet to come.
I have so much more to say on the subject of Eve and the Bible. But this has already been very long. I’ll have to touch on those another time.
It’s a shame that the narrative of the Bible isn’t more uplifting to women. We have so much to offer the world. This painting is for us. Our time will come. I often worry how much more damage our Earth will have to endure before we finally learn our lesson. How many years do we waste chasing money and power instead of knowledge and empathy? We have long been told that our emotions and ability to empathize are our weaknesses. But, truly, they are our strengths. What is your story?
