The Naming: Eve and Abel

Nicole Rose Gelormino

Eve and Abel

2020

oil on canvas

48 x 36”

A figure made entirely of red snakes reclines or hovers away from the viewer, and is contained by wood-colored arch above. Behind her, sky-blue drifts into icy white. Within the bed of snakes blooms one orange and pink lily, from which a curling stack of dense, opaque smoke drifts down. The end of the smoke forms into pale gray and beige lips. I began this painting as the Black Lives Matter movement regained momentum catalyzed by yet more traumatic events. I heard people trying to make meaning of the lives tragically lost, which is an important step in the process of grieving. I also knew that no movement could ever equal the value of the life lost by a mother. In the biblical story of creation, Abel’s name, meaning breath or smoke—foreshadows his early death. When my father died, my grandmother claimed that even as a baby he did not want to live. In this painting I contemplated a mother’s loss of the child.