Inktober 2022 Sketches

By Paris Qin

2021-2022

Prompts : Tempting, Scallop

So Eden Sank To Grief

By Pauli Voelkel

The woman in the center is the Garden of Eden as a human and she is crying on the stump of a tree. In the background is the Earth covered by a layer of gas and around it is direct examples of human destruction of the environment. For example, the Dakota Access Pipeline is represented as a snake on the American flag in the shape of the states that it goes across.

The drawing was inspired by a line from the Robert Frost poem Nothing Gold Can Stay. It reads:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay. - Robert Frost

The poem is originally about the sun rise but the line "So Eden sank to grief" makes me think of what Mother Nature's reaction to the effect humans have on the environment would be. I do not consider myself an artist but I wanted to make a statement about the neglect that our Earth is receiving.

 
SoEdenSankToGrief - Pauline Voelkel.jpg