This is a riff on the so-called Venus of Willendorf, just about the oldest artwork in the history of the world. Carved in limestone, it’s a little taller than four inches, the original tinted with red ochre. Roughly about twenty-five to thirty thousand years BCE, some very early human artists chose to construct stone figurines, similar to the image I’ve painted. In all of these figurines, the breasts and abdomen are emphasized, but the heads are not defined. Why? I suppose because the idea behind the artwork is meant to represent and celebrate the mystery of birth and the creation of life. Archetypes are transpersonal. Surely the phenomenon of birth, no less that of woman as the vehicle of birth, must have struck the earliest humans as an awesome mystery. And despite all we have come to understand, it still is—after all, the origin of life and the origin of the universe are still mysteries.