Hildegard Listening

2015 © Sue Ellen Parkinson 

Original – Acrylic on Wood, 30” x 48,” SOLD

Prints – 13”x 19,” $55

When I did the photo shoot for this painting, this image was one of those in-between-the-poses. The model was resting and wasn’t aware of me. I love it, because she looks so still, and perfectly inside the egg of herself. The quote, “Music can transform the world,” is Hildegard’s. During her many years of isolation, as an anchorite, Hildegard saved herself by studying healing plants and composing beautiful music. Throughout her life she had visions. She saw God in the form of a woman, which she wrote about in her illuminated books. When she was released from her anchorite cell, she went on to become a renown Benedictine Abbess, and managed to establish two convents for women. She was known as, The Sibyl of the Rhine.