Girl Mending Nets 

William Collins created this poignant painting, Girl Mending Nets. The net, draped across the composition, is more than a tool; it is an ancient symbol of connection and dependence on nature's bounty. The act of mending, too, carries its weight. Consider Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey, weaving and unweaving a shroud, a symbol of both fidelity and delay. Here, the young woman's steady hands echo Penelope’s, yet her gaze is directed outward, towards the sea, hinting at a future entwined with the unpredictable elements. The circularity of this image – the cyclical nature of fishing, mending, and waiting – speaks to a primal understanding of life's rhythms. These nets, these threads, bind communities across time, each knot a testament to shared survival and the enduring human spirit. We can see an echo of this sentiment in Van Gogh’s ‘The Sower’ where humankind cultivates and repeats an action to nourish and sustain existence.