SPIRITUAL SEDUCTION

A woman portrayed from behind turns her head backwards towards the observer. Her gaze fixes him... seductively. The woman sinks her legs up to mid-thigh in a swamp (“Water lilies”, homage to the American painter Charles Courtney Curran) which extends to a horizon delimited by a thick woodland hedge. Beyond this hedge is the beginning of another world, the pagan world of the Roman ruins of Palmyra, the pearl of the desert. Beyond, woods and mists of low clouds. Above, the violence of a dramatic sunset.
The marsh is dotted with white lotus flowers, Buddha's favorite. They arise from the mud of the swamp, rising among their large leaves, some green and fresh, others putrid or dry, to explode in a flowering that symbolizes spiritual rebirth as conceived in the philosophy of Siddharta Gautama.
The water, the swamp, the lotus, the pagan ruins, the halo, an ancient pre-Christian symbol of contact with the transcendent and the mystery: the image is full of suggestive symbols that evoke a world that has apparently disappeared, but is always present deep inside of man.
S.B.