The Garden of the Double Venus

Medium Description

Acrylic paint, modeling paste, and printed paper collage on canvas

Artist Description

This painting is part of my series, The Interior is Political: A Series of Surreal Paintings Exploring Mental Health and Power. The work depicts a fantasy world where queer love overcomes hate and prejudice. The painting was created over collaged anti-LGBTQ+ news articles, transforming messages of exclusion into a celebration of love and resilience. The figures represent queer love and Mother Nature. Printed poems by Sappho (a historical queer figure and the origin of the terms “sapphic” and “lesbian”) were hand-sculpted into paper flowers and attached to the surface, adding three-dimensional elements to the piece as well as celebrating the history of queer love. In addition to the painting, I wrote a free-verse poem to complement the piece and carry my message further. 

“The Garden of the Double Venus” 

There is a garden 

where Venus herself split into two.

not from fracture, 

but abundance.

One face turns toward the sea,

salt-lipped from waves that strike and retreat,

eyes forever fixed on the horizon.

The other turns inward,

toward a heart that loves other women,

to a softness unruled by conquest. 

The Garden of the Double Venus 

is a place where the cruelty of man 

cannot take root,

because the soil refuses it.

Here, the darkness of human nature

is disarmed by Mother Nature,

and every sharp edge

is blunted at the gate.

I find her there.

She is a woman made of flowers

and unfinished lines,

petals threaded with metaphor, 

thorns that exist

to protect what is tender.

When she speaks, 

the air listens.

She takes hateful language 

and weaves it into poetry,

transforms words into wildflowers

that climb the trellises of her ribs

and spill from a mouth 

never taught to be silent. 

She does not dominate the earth;

she is the earth:

patient and ferocious,

delicate and mighty,

each step tracing creation and destruction,

blooming despite everything

that tries to burn her down. 

Her love is a light,

touching everything 

just enough to make it visible. 
She holds my darkness in her hands 

and does not ask it to leave.

She teaches it

how to photosynthesize.

This is the Garden of the Double Venus,

where love is not a wound,

where women are gods

and goddesses 

and gardens 

all at once.

And I,

kneeling in the living quiet,

where language thins into soil,

learn that devotion

is seasonal and sure:

the ground will hold 

as she turns toward me,

and light knows 

where to land.