Art On The Dark Side: Artemis

Though I do SO love the lights of the season and the sweets (oh my goodness the sweets!), I needed a little deviant distraction from the mall madness and blizzard coverage. The marvelously macabre Miss June at Art on The Dark Side provided "Mutant" as this weeks prompt!

"Artemis" Molly Roberts 2007. Oil on canvas

"Artemis" was part three of a goddess triptych I completed a year ago. She was designed to represent the playful and strange attributes of maidenhood. I don't remember exactly how I came to give her fawn arms--I knew I wanted to include "deer" in the work somewhere as it is one of the goddess's most well known symbols. I had sketched her holding a fawn, or wearing necklace with a stag charm, but it must have been a late evening at the studio when I decided I would depict her sprouting hooves. I wanted her to be childish, curious. I did a brief jot on her while the work was in progress:
"Girl hood. Maidenhood. Fleshy flowers in bloom. Flat chest. Imaginative because they don't remember. Mischievous. Flitting about in a dandelion tutu blowing bubbles in the evening. Apple blossoms in early may. Am I too skinny? Too short? Too blond? Wanting to be a mermaid, sand pushed up on my skin. Hair was wild like a thousand shivering threads. Teeth like an old house full of ghosts. Firsts: first taste, first swim, first crushed firefly. Unsure, bashful, insignificant. Flying was not improbably, it was a necessity. Queen of the Thicket, benevolent ruler of all the crickets. A petticoat full of hares. "