The very mention of the names Adam and Eve brings up a range of emotions to many different people. Christians think of them fondly as our first Earthly parents from when God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago. They believe that this is the factual truth and they will go to great lengths to proselytise to and defend this belief against all of the logic and scientists and gentiles of the world who question their dogma.
The Christian version of this story also has a femiphobic slant to it, conveniently used as justification for the disenfranchisement of women. For instance, Eve is seen as lesser than Adam, after all as the story goes: God made her from Adam’s rib just to keep him company. Eve is seen as weak, as a sinful betrayer who caved in to the temptations of the evil serpent, pissed off God by tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and got both herself and Adam kicked out of Eden. They were cast out of paradise and put on planet Earth as punishment and then commanded to “multiply and replenish the Earth,” and so they did. There are now around seven billion people on the planet. Maybe God should rethink that commandment now???
On the other side of the spectrum, many non-Christians often cringe at story of Adam and Eve as a ridiculous myth told by bible-bashing Creationists who deny scientific evidence of evolution and dating technologies in efforts of keeping the minds of the masses closed shut. There are environmentalists who have pointed out the human-suprimacist programming interlaced into the myth, such as the language about humans being the chosen divine children of God, that the Earth was created just for humans to conquer, and that all of the other lifeforms were put on the planet just for human use and disposal. These beliefs are clearly core beliefs in our society that support, justify and reinforce the consumption and exploitation that is devouring the planet.
Why did I choose to paint Adam and Eve? I wanted to put a different spin onto the story. I wanted to take these two iconic figures away from the back-water, controversial, religious dogma, and to shed new light on them, and to give them a happy ending to the story. To me, Adam and Eve are fictional characters who are symbolic archetypes of Divine Masculine and Feminine, yin and yang, He and She, who are both a part of all of us to some degree. I don’t see them as the literal first human parents on Earth, but I do imagine them as the higher selves of all of us. They are experiencing life through us and in us, and their spirits see with the eyes of all beings, and feel with the burning heart of knowing.
They are here to taste the fruit of “the knowledge of good and evil,” the knowledge of every experience ever experienced by every being that ever existed. They feel all of the joy, delight, laughter, love, and exhilaration of life that can only be known in duality by contrasting it with all of the pain, sorrow, loss, depression, and hate in the world that often comes along with the incarnated experience. Every smile, every smirk, every connection, every betrayal… they’ve been there. Every hardship, every success, every birth, every death… it is written on their souls. They experience forces of great good on the Earth, which there is plenty, and also forces of great evil, the forces that exploit, destroy, and wish to do harm to others. They have gone on quite a ride here on Earth, mostly at war with each other in their many power struggles and battles of the sexes. They yearn to come back home to the garden, back to bliss, back to reprieve, and back to God.
The only way to end duality is to become one. Yin and yang, male and female, join together. Amidst all of the interpretations of their story, no one can deny that it is sexual. They are the divine lovers at play in the greatest love story ever told. Endless romances, partnerships, and heartbreaks do they experience through the mating rituals of the Earthlings. Sometimes they manifest as soul mates, sometimes they incarnate as abusive lovers, and sometimes they express masculinity and femininity in queer and cross-gendered ways, but they certainly do come together. They are insects, birds, reptiles, animals, humans. They are gay, straight, queer, and of all races. They are the dance and the romance of every species that reproduces sexually. I’d like to challenge the dogmatic Christians who tell this story about the first human lovers on the planet, yet demonize sexual freedom. More importantly, I want to challenge those of us trying to shake off all constrictive social programming about sex to break free into our own liberated sexual freedom. To me, sex is sacred. In as far as it is between consenting adults, sex is a beautiful medium for connection, an avenue to explore desires, an opportunity for growing love, and an attempt at becoming one. I was going to include in this series several graphic sexual images of Adam and Eve connecting but I decided to discard them because I’m not really THAT artist. Although I paint many nudes, I think the act of sex itself is private and personal and should be kept between the lovers.
I also interpret the original biblical story of Adam and Eve “falling from the garden” as symbolic of the humans of Civilization destroying the Earth, our Garden, once teeming with pristine eco systems and lush diversity of life. We’ve “Paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” destroyed our own beautiful home and turned it into a desolate wasteland This is truly humans’ fall from grace and now it’s doomed to experience all of the diar consequences to come, which are not going to be pretty.
My series of art “Adam and Eve Come Home” is my mind’s escape from this hell. My story picks up at the end of all of that, the end of Civilization. My story is the healing of the Earth, the restoring of the wildlife, the freedom from the insanity. Adam and Eve Come Home to the Garden. They are healed, they reconnect and become one, out of duality, and live happily ever after in the renewed Garden of Eden with the Tree of Life.
The higher selves of all of us are free, but now they carry with them “the knowledge of good and evil,” having experienced it all. In my paintings they are depicted as larger than life, their spirits break free from the prison, and are expressing relief and gratitude with symbolic poses of open-heartedness. They each have the sacred burning heart, because no matter what they’ve done, they are innocent.
They reunite, reconnect, all wounds are healed, all resentments are set aside, all guilt and shame is forgiven. In this depiction of both of them together, over their hearts you see a shattered image of their symbolic suffering. He heals from the pain of crucifixion, and she heals from this image of a “witch” (woman) being burned at the stake. All of the pain and suffering is disintegrating and they are free souls now.
Then in this final mixed media painting, they get married in one of the most glorious weddings ever held in the Universe, and it is beautiful, it is innocent, and all is well. All the animals in the audience rejoice. This is the happiest art piece I have ever created, and I did it while in the depths of depression. I spent months and months meticulously selecting and cutting out images and placing them on this piece in just the right place. It was one of the most challenging artworks I have ever created. It’s my masterpiece. This is my happy ending to the story of Adam and Eve, and the very act of me creating it is energetically sending out that vibration across the world. Peace and Love to all!
Most of these mixed media paintings are available for purchase at a reasonable price. My masterpiece “Tree of Life” is priced at $333,000. There are however available, limited edition fine art giclee prints of it available for $1,800. This is printed with the highest quality 200 year rated archival ink that is UV coated. It has extremely high resolution and is stretched on gallery wrapped frames with black edges. Please email SandyParsonsArt@gmail.com if you are interested.
Sandy Parsons Art 