Day 1 - Biancabella

Last year, when I completed this challenge, I had a theme, and I'll be honest: I found that damn helpful.  As I joked to someone yesterday, without a theme, it's hard to have a brilliant idea every day in a row for 30 days!  This year, my theme is "Women in Fairy Tales and Myths," because I love to paint women, and I love the bizarre, bloody, murderous, awful, surreal, and terrifying tales that different cultures pass down through the generations.  Humanity knows how to keep it real.

To kick things off, I chose an Italian fairy tale called "Biancabella and the Snake," because it is freaky interesting.

• Biancabella's father takes a wife because he is growing very concerned that he has no heirs. His wife, however, does not conceive a child by him.  Instead, she conceives when a tiny female garden snake slithers up her dress and into her womb during a casual outdoor nap.  It's a phallic symbol.  It's a female.  It's FASCINATING. 
• Biancabella is born with the snake wrapped around her throat three times.
• Later, the snake calls Biancabella to the garden, identifies itself as her sister, and asks her to bathe in milk and rosewater, after which, flowers grow from Biancabella's hands.  To me, this is a sort of secular baptism, followed by something like stigmata.  MORE FASCINATING.

I will probably stick with this fairy tale for at least one more painting, but until then, this is Biancabella in the garden after her milk bath, sprouting flowers from her hands.  I took only one work in progress shot.

It is available in my shop.