Oilgraph on wooden panel // 24” x 36”

Sisera's mother...

Rarely depicted in art, the story comes from Judges 5 during the Song of Deborah telling of the defeat of the Canaanite general Sisera who was killed by the hand of Jael.

As her song of victory goes....

“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother
behind the lattice she cried out
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
The wisest of her ladies answer her
indeed, she keeps saying to herself

‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils
a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera
colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck
all this as plunder?’"

I thought it would be a piece about a mother longing for her child who is never coming back from war.

I was wrong.

What seemed to rise up was a piece about a greedy woman who was more concerned with the spoils of war her son had promised, than her son himself.

Created in live performance in Santa Barbara, Ca November 2015
at the opening exhibition of In the Tine of the Judges