Snake in the Grass 

Sarah Joncas made this painting, “Snake in the Grass”, sometime after her birth in 1986, using oils. The young woman’s obliviousness to the snakes invokes familiar biblical themes of innocence, temptation, and expulsion. But notice the way the painting updates that theme for the modern world. The woman is bejeweled, clad in plaid, and plugged into her iPhone as she reclines casually on a blanket. Joncas places the biblical scene within our contemporary moment, hinting at the ways consumerism, technology, and social media distract us from ecological realities. Where once we feared divine retribution, now we risk our own destruction. The painting prompts us to consider the politics of imagery, how ideas of the past can be revived and revised. To understand it better, we might consult religious texts, environmental studies, social histories of technology, and so on. In short, we must look beyond art to grasp its full meaning.