Medea

The sorceress in miniature — a small-format drawing of tremendous intensity.

Medea is a studio work by artist Neve, pencils on black cardboard on MDF, 35 × 50 cm, created in 2015.

"Medea" is a colored pencil drawing on black cardboard, 35 × 50 cm, from 2015. A woman in profile, face tilted upward, one hand raised holding a knife. The light falls on her from below and to the side, leaving half the face in shadow, carving the jaw and cheekbone into relief. She wears an ornate costume — feathers, scales, something ceremonial — that belongs to ritual rather than daily life. The knife is not raised in threat. It is raised in the way an instrument is raised before it is used. Medea is the mythological figure who loved completely, was betrayed absolutely, and made her response equal to what she had suffered. In the tradition she is sorceress and mother, foreigner and queen, the woman who did what she said she would do. The knife is inseparable from her story — not as a symbol of violence but as the thing that made her word irrevocable. She said it. She did it. The face lifted upward is not asking permission. Neve draws her at the moment before — not the act, not its aftermath, but the interior second when the decision has already been made and the body has not yet moved.