Wilhelmina Peace, Bitten, work on paper (etching), 35 x 35 cm
Year: 2024
Medium(s): etching with soft ground and drypoint on Somerset velvet paper
Size: 35 x 35 cm (image / plate size: 18 x 18 cm)
8 editions, numbered and signed.
(The number of the available edition might be different from the number displayed in the image)
- £200.00
Shipping - Collection from the gallery's office in 3-5 business days. Shipped in 3-5 business days from Northern Ireland, UK.
Return - This work is eligible for return.
Artist - Selected Recognitions
- Recipient of the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair Prize (UK)
- Extensively exhibited in Northern Ireland, Dublin, London, and internationally (incl. Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition in Belfast, and Bankside Gallery in London)
- Work included in private collections nationally and internationally
Further information
An original reference to Eve, a much-debated figure – an easily corruptible sinner or a rebel choosing agency and knowledge?
Artist's commentary about this work: 'This etching revisits the biblical story of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Its double-frame narrative composition places a smaller scene within a larger one, as though the surrounding image has been cut open to reveal another scene beyond it.
The larger scene depicts an idyllic pastoral landscape of trees and deep grasses, where a naked couple lies together. At the far end of the composition, in the upper right-hand corner, a white snake coils around a branch, quietly observing the scene. This is Eden before the Fall: a world in which Adam and Eve exist freely, naked and unencumbered by shame or responsibility. Yet the snake already signals the disruption to come, lurking at the edge of the image, poised to tempt and alter the course of human existence.
At the centre of the composition, sharply cut against the pastoral backdrop, Eve looks directly at the viewer as she bites into the apple. Far from passive or ignorant, she appears fully conscious of her actions as she reaches for the fruit of Knowledge. In this retelling, Eve becomes an active agent in a story that has traditionally cast her as the wrongdoer- too desirous, too selfish, or too naïve to comprehend the consequences of her choice. Peace instead presents her as knowingly transgressive.
Eve’s action can therefore be understood not simply as a fall from innocence, but as a deliberate exchange: she sacrifices the security and stagnation of Eden for the complexity, uncertainty, and richness of human experience. Her choice becomes an assertion of agency; the moment in which she knowingly relinquishes paradise in order to become fully human.'
Wilhelmina Peace is an award-winning emerging artist and printmaker. Working across drawing and printmaking, particularly etching and lithography, Peace’s practice is deeply informed by her background in anthropology. Her work explores myth, fairytale, and folklore as frameworks through which she examines the inner processes of the human psyche and personal development.
Find out more about Wilhelmina Peace and view all her works on the artist's page.
