In my series of oil paintings Mit Y Eden, I visit the story of Adam and Eve found in the Abrahamic faiths. These paintings are created from a scientific prospective. Drawing inspiration from religious text and reimagining them with our knowledge of the ethnicity, landscape and flora of the first humans who developed approximately 300,000 years ago. The Y chromosome found in all men can be traced to West Africa and mitochondrial genome found in women originated in East Africa.

Western art as it is practiced today was introduced through religious imagery and these inspire the composition and techniques used to create this series. Particularly the 1526 work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, held at The Courtauld. Using the many rich components of the narrative I contemporaneously explore the genres of history painting, portraiture, still life and landscape.

The story of Adam and Eve is presented differently amongst the faiths, but they all confront a predicament; that moral choice excludes us from the chance to be divine. I aim to retell this through a humanising lens that explores constructs of freedom, the forbidden, curiosity, temptation, choice, sin, separation, loss and consequence and repentance.