9×12″ oil on paper
August 30, 2012
Inspired by a fairy tale by George MacDonald, in which the female character, Nycteris, unknowingly grows up in a dark cavern, never seeing light beyond a dim globe-shaped lamp. At this point in the story, at the age of 16, she accidentally ventures beyond the cave, and although it is night time, the experience of seeing the brightly lit moon for the first time sends her into a state of ecstasy. She, having never seen the moon, sees what we fail to see, since we so easily lose a sense for the extraordinary in what has become “ordinary.” Here is the passage:
She was in a dream of pleasant perplexity, of delightful bewilderment. She could not tell whether she was upon her feet or drifting about like the firefly, driven by the pulses of an inward bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance.
Unconsciously she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had been from her very birth a troglodyte, stood in the ravishing glory of a southern night, lit by a perfect moon….