The Secrets Of Their Hearts Laid Bare 

2019 Oil on Italian Linen 120x100cm

Corinthians 14:25 has the secrets of one’s hearts revealing God is amongst us. I’m more circumspect. It is tempting to believe that behind the public mask we are all the same, naked and vulnerable. 

Maybe. The ancient Greeks certainly entertained the notion of alternate possibilities, with the myth of Hermaphroditus going back at least to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The love child of Hermes and the Aphrodite, Hermaphroditus was celebrated in ancient statues (the most famous of which is the “Borghese Hermaphrodite,” now in the Louvre it’s a 2nd century Roman copy of a Greek original, complete with a marble mattress added in 17th century by Bernini). 

Whatever you believe, the integrity of the archetype, the blending of two ideal human forms, has its’ intrigue.