Harvest

19.25" x 17"/49 x 43cm

Oil on aluminium panel

2024

Contact Lesley about this painting.

Add to My Collection

When I was a child at school, we would celebrate Harvest Festival as a mark of thanksgiving for the food that had been grown during the spring and summer. Even though we were still small, we were taught about how crops were grown and the cycle of life through the seasons, and that we had to revere the miracle of life, because it was not a given. As our farming practices have become more mechanised and people have migrated from land to city, many have lost their connection to the land and to the legends associated with it. “Harvest’ is about giving thanks for the miracle of growing life sustaining crops. The harvest that provides sustenance not just for us, but for our fellow travelers on earth. Hidden in the maiden’s bodice is a corn dolly, another memory of my childhood, where some of the precious corn stalks would be women into a figure that was stored as an offering to the earth, in the hopes that the coming year would, once again, give us a harvest.