Jazmine by Rebecca Dzartov in Melbourne

2022, 12 x 23.5 inches (30x60cm), Oil, Acrylic & Recycled Plastic on canvas. “Jazmine” is the third part of my series inspired by qualities. A representation of ‘Vulnerability’: capable of being physically or emotionally wounded. A naked pale blonde woman cries while sitting under a dark sky featuring the aurora borealis. A halo of eyes and a headband made of pearls and green jasper sits on her head. 3 snowy mountains rest in the background, with a jackalope and monstera leaves in the foreground. Each element of this painting has the same lime green incorporated into it as you can see by the glow on Jazmine’s face. A pale yellow art nouveau style border ties everything together bringing some warmth to an otherwise cold feel of this painting. Jazmine’s just trying to feel alive. Slicing up Jazmine’s face and the jackalopes antlers represent how temporary our physical world is. The most essential elements for spotting the aurora borealis are cold temperatures and clear skies. In this piece, the aurora borealis is a visual representation that even in the darkest, coldest of places light can be found. Both jewels in this piece are made of recycled plastic. “The mountains are inspired by Pangea. A supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. Thus Pangaea was the most recent mega continent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by scientists. Mountains are a huge form of evidence that supports this supercontinent. The Central Pangean Mountains were a great mountain chain in the middle part of the supercontinent Pangaea that stretches across the continent from northeast to southwest during the Carboniferous, Permian Triassic periods. The ridge was formed as a consequence of a collision between the supercontinents Laurussia and Gondwana during the formation of Pangaea. It was similar to the present Himalayas at its highest elevation during the beginning of the Permian period. It’s hard to imagine now that once upon a time that the Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians, the Ouachita Mountains, and the Little Atlas of Morocco are the same mountain range, once connected to the Central Pangean Mountains.” The rabbit with horns on the bottom left is inspired by a story I came across, Wyoming’s Jackalope. As the story goes, jackalopes are jackrabbits with the horns of an antelope. Jackalopes are fast and powerful — with good taste in liquor, they love whiskey— but legend states that they’re also highly intelligent. They can understand human speech, and even mimic it. The creatures like to sit near campfires and startle humans by singing back their campfire songs. The creature came from the mind of a Wyomingite named Douglas Herrick. Herrick came up with the creature after a successful hunting trip with his brother Ralph in 1932. When they got home, the Herrick brothers said “We just threw the dead jackrabbit in the shop when we come in and it slid on the floor right up against a pair of deer horns we had in there,” Ralph recalled. “It looked like that rabbit had horns on it.” He remembered that his brother’s eyes lit up. Douglas Herrick exclaimed, “Let’s mount that thing!” Before long, Wyomingites grew to adore the rabbit with antlers, but others insist that the creature existed long before the 1930s. Perhaps the oldest sighting of a jackalope comes from a 16th-century painting. However, scientists believe that some of these early “sightings” might have been something quite different. They suspect that people who saw a rabbit with antlers actually saw creatures affected by Shoppe Papilloma, a type of cancer that causes horn-like bumps to grow from an animal’s head. Ever since Douglas Herrick came up with the jackalope in 1932, his hometown of Douglas, Wyoming has embraced the creature as its own. “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name.” – Psalm 147:4 Sources: vividmaps.com/central-pangean-mountains allthatsinteresting.com/jackalope