Echidna

Mother of Toddlers

I was invited back to be a part of Modern Eden Gallery’s Portrait show which happens once a year. This year’s theme is Myth. Ah, right up my alley.

With so many ideas to choose from in my mind it was hard to select but this one just kept coming to the forefront. I’ve been wanting to paint Echidna fo a while now. She is the primordial Goddess of Chaos in the Greek pantheon and is the mother of all of the famous monsters in Greek mythology. Her husband is Typhon, God of Chaos and both of them are children of Gaia, the Earth and Tartarus, the Underworld. They were part of the Gods that were conquered by Zeus as he imposed the new world order by overthrowing the primordial entities and their children were elements of chaos that remained in the world that were systematically overcome by a variety of Greek heroes and demigods.

I, for one, like the primordial gods and goddesses of myth very much. They are wild, wooly, and untamed, monsterous and unpredictable. They spark my imagination and the very thought of them makes me feel vital and alive. And so I wanted to portray one of these incredible beings in my portrait study.

But instead of representing Echidna in her full power mode, I wanted to paint a more mundane side to her story. I wanted to depict her at home, on just a normal day, with some of her children as toddlers. She had quite a few children and for this idea, I knew I had to pick the most recognizable ones. I chose: Hydra, the many headed snake dragon of the cut-one-off-and-two-grow-back fame; Chimera, the beast with a lion’s and a goat’s head, a snake for a tail and dragon wings (probably some of his dad’s genes there); Sphinx, as in the Sphinx of Oedipus’s riddle fame; and Cerberus, hound and guardian of Hell.

I’m not sure how many of you out there have or have had toddlers in your lives, but it is both like having a magical fairy in your home all the time. Fairies, of course, are both benevolent creatures as well as ones that will wisk you away to their other dimensional realm for funsies and let you out a generation later. We were never meant to parent these tiny magical creatures alone - our very social structure as humans depends on us living in communal groups and tribes where mothering and growing up is done in community and our single family isolation completely throws off millennia of social evolution and we can barely cope. While I’m sure Typhon was a great father, he probably wasn’t around all the time and being a primordial goddess, Echidna didn’t have that many friends since the universe was barely born. So she did a lot of alone parenting.

Here she is, on a day where all the babes are going through it all at the same time, looking off into the murky swampy foliage above her, having a moment.

I wanted her to have a look that is both, “aww, I love my kids” to “OMG I’m losing my mind” because these two things can and do exist simultaneously often. I wanted the viewer to hear the toddler screams, the roaring and howling, the anxious hissing, the, “Mama! Mama! Mama!” all at once and then imagine tuning out for a moment of internal silence and peace before turning back to the cacophony and solving each little one’s problems.

See, even though Hydra grew up to be big and strong, she always suffered from anxiety and was a very shy child. She always hid behind her mother and rarely if ever let go of her tail.

Chimera and Sphinx were always at each other. Chimera, being part lion, was of course a Leo astrologically, and just wanted all of the attention, all of the time. Sphinx, also a Leo, had a bit more of a level head and knew that leadership came from within. But neither of them like sharing Mama’s attention with their sibling. So if it wasn’t Chimera pushing Sphinx it was Sphinx stealing Chimera’s lunch. It was always something.

Cerberus. Ah, Cerberus. He was always getting into things. If it wasn’t emptying the contents of absolutely every cabinet and drawer, it was climbing onto something and nearly killing himself in the attempt. He had more scrapes and bruises than his siblings combined.

While Echidna is literally one of the great Goddesses of the Universe, she can also have rough days. Here she is without her regalia just trying to get through a day that, from the looks of it, has been a long one already. We’ve all been there. If this is you (like sometimes it’s me) just know you are doing great and I see you. <3

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This painting will be available through Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco. The Portrait Show: Myth opens June 15th and the opening is from 6-8pm. I will be there and I would love to see you if you can make it.

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Here is my most recent Mische Technique How To video all on Harmonizing glazes where I use this very painting as my demo.

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