Hermione Shaw

Summer’s Blood

Jackson's Art Prize 2025
Oil
Canvas
160 x 200 cm

£2,800

“The painting ’Summer’s Blood’ is in reference to the poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ by Seamus Heaney. An allegory for loss of innocence and passing of youth, the poem explores the childhood joy of hunting for, and eating blackberries. The berry’s ‘flesh was sweet like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it’. The children hoard their ‘cache’, and the berries subsequently rot, ‘the sweet flesh would turn sour’. The painting sits in the space between the sweet and the rot; a toe in each. It explores the intense and transient experience of youth, within a twilight state of both agony and ecstasy, love and pain.”