I LOVE the way the concept of snake and the concept of tree are indistinguishable from each other here. This painting does absolutely amazing things by making lots of its elements two different things at the same time..
Crowley's garment matches her surroundings and arises from them, and there's no hard division between the garment and the forest floor/background, nor between Crowley's body and the garment at the wrist; but Crowley's skin and her golden shawl are in contrast to the background/garment colors. The curls of her hair echo the arcs of snake/root/branches and the red as well, but Crowley's hair isn't quite the same red as the snake belly/tree branch; it's more orange. So Crowley is part of her surroundings--even created by her surroundings--but distinct from them at the same time.
I can't help but see this piece as existing in the context of John Collier's Lilith, and I think that only strengthens her.'s messages.
The coloring and composition of both pieces are markedly similar and especially given that Lilith is such a famous piece, I feel like that similarity is purposeful allusion and invites comparison between the two.
Lilith stands in the foreground, nude, her posture open and turned toward the viewer, smiling down at her companion the snake, who is wound around and draped over her like a wrap. Her body is displayed for the viewer, and the pose is one of eroticism and sensuality; the expression on her face is happiness and affection. The piece's sinister notes (the snake, the carnivorous flowers at Lilith's feet, the Monstera deliciosa behind her) are just as beautiful and detailed as Lilith herself.
Crowley is facing the opposite direction of Lilith, away from the viewer; where Lilith's posture is open, Crowley's is closed and self-protective. Her facial expression is one of sadness or pain, and she is alone and without her consort (in contrast to both Lilith and to the customary depiction of Crowley).
Instead of in the foreground, Crowley stands in the midground of their picture, surrounded on all sides, even above, by vegetation. The vegetation is mostly indistinct, unlike the delicate detail applied to Crowley herself.
Her wrap is the golden shawl. Because of the dress that is dress and skin and ground all at once, we can read the shawl as both fabric and as a Heaven-tinted skin that Crowley has shed but not discarded. The rolled neckline and sleeve of the dress can likewise be read as both fabric and as a currently shedding skin: Crowley emerges (both in the chrysalid sense and in the rising-upwards-from-Hell sense) from the skins/fabrics as someone not Heavenly gold, evil's black, Earth's green, or the snake's/tree's red, but entirely her own colors, a distinct individual.
By referencing a painting about eroticism and sensual allure, @the-maw-consumes emphasizes how much her. is not about those things. It draws our attention to how Crowley's position, posture, and expression differ from those of Lilith and what they says about what's being shown. To me, her. is a piece of art about self-creation--about becoming a her, singular, formerly having been an it or a they*. It's a statement about how the self both is and isn't part of the circumstances that make it, and about how someone who self-creates both wears and emerges from those circumstances.
I love how this piece is so crowded and teeming and fecund and yet gives such a striking impression of isolation . A beautiful new creature is emerging from the situation that has given rise to who and what she is now, and as the singularity of the title, the golden skin/shawl, and Crowley's facial expression suggest, that emergence is lonely and comes with loss.
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