A friend of mine asked me to do a painting for her about the poem by D.H. Lawrence:

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

I loved painting this piece because it was my first real story-painting. And because it was about my friend's journey, and I felt both honored and scared to try to portray what she was going through at the time. Also, we were watching Game of Thrones, so that epic show also impacted me and some of the images I chose for this project.

Everything in this piece is deeply symbolic:

Ravens- When they fed Elijah after he predicted the drought

Her pants: wild thing (from the poem)

Her hip: red, injured. valar morghulis - “all men must die”. Hip, because it has been displaced (like Jacob from the Bible)

Her legs: entangled

Her pillow: valar morghulis & valar dohaeris

Bottles: tears Psalm 56:8

Candles: Isaiah 42:3 a faintly burning wick he will not put out

Ladder: Jacob's Ladder

Hebrew in top right corner: El Roi,  the God who sees 

Ravens’ message in beaks: El Roi, because God sees her and has not forgotten

Her shirt: Isaiah 42