Lilies on a rainy day, 21 May 2020

The lily symbolises purity in old European stories even though it's not much mentioned in the media today, which is full of economic uncertainties. The flowers have a delicate scent, and draw light towards them in an interior of rainy gloom. Today is the feast day of St Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, who famously had a vision of the cross at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and became Christian. His saintly mother set out for Jerusalem to see what she could find, three hundred years after the Crucifixion. I think of her as an early archaeologist, because digging down into rubbish dumps around the foot of the hill of Golgotha she found (she was sure)  the three crosses, ascertaining Christ's cross through a miracle.  Pieces of the True Cross found their way to many holy places across Europe, including Cyprus. In Jerusalem I saw the place, now a church, where she  fed the workmen who built chapels and churches for her across the city. On the wall hung a great bronze vessel, as big as a copper, in which she cooked lentils.  St Helen is much venerated today in that underlayer of the faithful, a world invisible, like artists are, to the greater society. 

Diana Wood Conroy 'Lilies on a rainy day', watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 21 May 2020