Exploring dualities, this painting pays homage to the traditional tune Hares on the Mountain, a love ballad shifting the traditional power dynamic in courtship.

Standing in between two branches, hair braided from two strands of hair, the central maiden is surrounded by two songbirds. Embodying the men, their presence challenges the commonly held analogy between women and non-threatening animals such as birds (a saying still used to refer to girls in a foolish manner) in folk music.

The strawberry, held in defiance, historically embodies both righteousness and sin. The choice of referencing an archival Strawberry Thief Liberty dress, whose pattern was designed after the cheeky thrushes W. Morris used to spot in his garden, subtly expands on this ambiguity. Seen as the fruit of love in ancient Rome, a devotional symbol of the Virgin in Medieval manuscripts, and even temptation’s ally in Bosch’s Garden of Delights, its double meaning never ceases to question intent. This painting, with its rich tones and luminous glazes, is an exercise in balance, standing in tune with our time in its subversive playfulness.

´If all you young men could sing like blackbirds and thrushes

How many maidens would go beating the bushes? ’

“Hares on the Mountain”, Folk Song from Somerset