This is my painting as of March 14. I am painting this for a special event in Salem, MA, to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.") My painting features a quotation from the novel, shown below.* I decided to show the text as if written on prison bars. The imagery of the rose bush also comes from the passage. In my painting, the roses can be seen through those bars. with branches of the wild rose bush positioned to suggest the letter A, which the novel's Hester Prynne was forced to wear as punishment for adultery. On March 14, I began a multi-day effort to try to get the lettering just right. To be continued. . .
*Here is the quotation from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter::
"But on one side of the portal and rooted almost at the threshold was a wild rose bush covered, this month of June, with its delicate gems which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom in token that the deep heart of Nature would pity and be kind to him."
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