left: 60”x 50”; right: 60” x 30”,oil on canvas

In time of war, I sang the care of fields.

To work the earth.

The grain ripening in the sun,

vines wed to the elm.

The fields ploughed in verses.

Bold with youth,

I lay in the beechtree shade.

This red and black painting is an imitation of Roman wall painting of the Second Style. It compacts the two thousand verses of Virgil’s long poem, The Georgics, into just a few lines. That poem preserved agricultural knowledge during the period of Rome’s devastating civil war: the weighing of soil, the tending of vines. Legend has it that the Emperor Augustus ordered Virgil to read it to him, so that he might be instructed on how to govern wisely in the aftermath of war. The painting’s grey vertical bands quote elements from Augustus’ Great Altar of Peace, where a frieze of vegetation speaks of Rome’s rebirth from fire and devastation. I have learned many things from Jamelie Hassan and her artwork. One was that peace is always better. The other, how frail material culture is, and how essential it is to our lives.