Liminal

When I began engaging with the text, I was struck by the strangeness of it all: Bathsheba is visiting her husband, the dying King David, while a naked Shunnammite virgin is warming him in bed, and Nathan is outside eavesdropping so he can confirm David's intentions for the heir.

What significance did Bathsheba have, that she, of all of David's countless wives, be the one summoned to his death bed (but not the one to keep him warm)? That her son, over all sons, had favor to be named king? And what uncommon wisdom might she have possessed to navigate all of the variables that made up her marriage to David?

As soon as David confirms that their son, Solomon will be the heir (not Adonijah, who was trying to assume the throne), Bathsheba bowed her face to the ground, proclaiming "long live my lord King David". The rest of the passage is about how David wants Nathan to handle the change over.

I started my piece with a bathing Bathsheba for an under-painting, for that is where it all began between these two. I imagined her as a person of great strength, character and courage, and the kind of person who could raise the "wisest man who ever lived". She strikes me as quite pivotal to this moment in history, being included in the genealogy of Jesus, and being a sort of midwife of the temple of Jerusalem that was to come. As I layered pastel paint over the figure, I contemplated the origin of a courtyard bath, adultery, the arc of her losses (Uriah, at least one son, etc.), her significance to David, her remarkable mothering of Solomon, and all that followed in history because of her. I represented her figure somewhat architecturally, and my subsequent marks are meant to hint at her liminal place in history.