Harvest

As part of Rosales’s allegorical paintings of seasons, The Harvest presents Eve as Mother Africa, the mother to all of the African diaspora. Against a gold mosaic backdrop, Eve as the personification of Autumn gathers her children born in the New World, as suggested by the Greco-Roman architecture. Decorated with the Adinkra symbol of service and leadership, the columns’ pedestals work to reconstitute African power.

A secondary theme of the painting is the cycle of life. The children—in all shades of the African diaspora—clamoring into Eve’s bosom symbolize innocence, its loss denoted by the string of pearls, broken and clutched tightly by the child at the bottom right who gazes directly and intently at the viewer. During the cycle of life, one gains an understanding of the world, represented by the snake of knowledge and its gesture to the stack of books. Death is part of the cycle, as noted by the skull supporting Eve’s left foot.