This painting makes me laugh. It is an inside joke [in my exclusive club of one], a mash-up between Newton’s apple and the variety enjoyed by Eve. The apple, in both stories, is a symbol for knowledge – or, better, that most human of characteristics: curiosity.
Curiosity is piqued when forbidden. Isn’t that the point of Pandora’s box or Eve’s apple? That piece of symbolic fruit is better understood in a greater illustrative context (making it, therefore, useful): in the story, there are two trees in the allegorical garden, 1) a tree of knowledge and 2) a tree of everlasting life. To “know” requires separation. Eat of this apple and you will forever discern between this and that. With this apple comes self-knowledge. You will “know” rather than simply “be.” You will, in your separation from your Self, spend the rest of your days attempting to get back into the garden to eat from the other tree (unity, wholeness, no-separation,…purpose, meaning, etc.). It’s a parabolic life cycle. Don’t bite that apple, I dare you.
The other apple-of-legend knocked some insight into Newton. “And, why did that apple fall straight to the ground?” Newton asked himself. His answer: universal gravitation! Every body in the universe is attracted to every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them [my comprehension and advanced math stopped at the word “force” so the rest of the law is yours to sense-make]. This apple was most welcome!
In both cases, I imagined, seated in front of my easel, that both the symbolic Eve and the actual Sir Isaac, in their respective apple moments, looked to the sky and uttered, “You have got to be kidding me!” And, so, curiosity calls.
read Kerri’s blog post about EVE
eve ©️ 2004ish david robinson
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I learned when I was a teenager that the act of painting was, for me, a form of meditation. Sometimes the meditation has nothing to do with the image that I am working with. The process becomes an exercise in presence. Sometimes, like this painting, the image has everything to do with the meditation. The image is the meditation.
The Direction of Intention 