Table in the rain, 30 April 2020

The house becomes an archaic structure in the inturned landscape of rain, combined with isolation. I thought about the Roman domus, how there was always a shrine to the Lares and Penates, the gods of the household, who ensured the careful ordering of things, preventing accidents and chaos. Small offerings were placed before their altar at the entrance to the house. As a girl in South Italy, I remember the saucers of milk left out by the front door for the house snake who looked after those chthonic underground forces that might upset everything. Could a king parrot be a sign? Birds were used  to foretell the future.  Aboriginal friends see birds as deliberate messengers, sometimes communicating death, but also a birth, or visitors. The saint's red of the king parrot's breast feathers are said by the Yolngu to have turned crimson in the brilliant rays of the first sunrise, the day the creation ancestors arrived on the land.I will assume then, that for the parrot to arrive at our table is a sign of new beginnings. 

Diana Wood Conroy 'Table in the rain' watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 30 April, 2020.