Title: Ostara
Artist: Rossitza Todorova
Date: 2021
Medium: Acrylic and silver leaf on linen
Credit Line: Collection of the John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art. Gift of Rossitza Todorova

Item description: Responding to Leonor Fini's 1949 work End of the World, Todorova's painting Ostara takes an optimistic view of the artist's fertility journey. Todorova has painted herself as the sphinx, emerging out of a natural desert pool, clad in the silver of the water. She holds a mountain lion skull in one hand and a silver egg in the other. Like the mythological sphinx, the painting asks a riddle of the viewer, to find the relationship between the woman, the skull, and the egg. A clue can be found in the title of the work Ostara, calling on the goddess of Spring who turns the death of Winter into the life of Spring, as does the cycle and wheel of time. In this painting, she lays her hope in herself, her body, and the cycle of life that the egg, a symbol of fertility, will prevail.