What’s on the Easel: Moths, Mortality & Metamorphosis

Lately, my easel has been filling with moths.

Death and rebirth have found their way into my work before, usually during seasons of loss, upheaval, and becoming. After losing both of my parents within the last two years, those themes have found their way back onto my canvas.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking about my own place in the world as I enter an age when women can begin to feel increasingly invisible. What does it mean to grow older in a culture that so often celebrates youth? And what happens when we stop worrying about being seen and begin paying attention to who we are becoming?

Why the moth?

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the moth.

I’m especially drawn to the Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth, with the strange, skull-like marking it carries on its back, a natural memento mori, a reminder that life is temporary. Even its scientific genus name, Acherontia, references Acheron, the river associated with the underworld in Greek mythology.

But the moth doesn’t speak only of mortality.

Like the butterfly, it begins as one thing, retreats into darkness, and emerges transformed.

Death and rebirth. Loss and transformation. Darkness and light.

These are familiar themes in my work and, I suppose, in my life.

Maybe this new body of work isn’t really about becoming invisible at all.

Maybe it’s about discovering what emerges next.