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“Argiope
Auranta”
Marilyn O. Strother
Oil on Canvas
About two weeks ago I discovered a huge and beautiful yellow garden spider
at the front of the house near the water faucet. It had a web between
some low shrubs and the siding. I bent closer to get a better look
at her and she started to bounce her web in the most threatening manner!
I was amazed and backed up then walked down our walk to see this thing
from a side angle view. She was moving the web two or three inches.
Well, I was so impressed, I decided to paint her for the "All
Things Great and Small" theme for the next church art show, which
I did. It was a simple piece of the spider in the center of her white
line of nearly perfect zig-zag spun silk. I enjoyed this discovery
so much that I did some research on the argiope auranta, and gave each
member of my family a web bouncing show.
"...the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every
bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call
them;
and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name."
-- Genesis 2:19
Marilyn O. Strother - A native of Champaign, Illinois, Marilyn received
her BFA with honors from Mills College, Oakland CA. She has cultivated
her art talent in Peace Corps/Nicaragua as an illustrator and has shown
her work in many venues. Among these are the U.S. Embassy in Managua,
Nicaragua, the United Nations in NYC, art fairs in New York and Connecticut,
as well as galleries in Illinois, California and New York. Having moved
to Chapel Hill in the summer of 2001 Marilyn now is adapting to this
new environment of subject matter. It is also time to discover how
thirty-five years of watercolor painting fortifies ventures into oil.
She celebrates the beauty of creation and the wonderful likeness we
have to our Creator in the use of our gifts. Even the abstract flow
of the
paint has its beauty before it is seen in form and context as a representation
of something else.
"What have you that you did not receive? If then you received
it, why then do you boast as if it were not a gift?"
-- The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 4:7
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