INSPIRATION

In the Grip of Time’s Vines is a meditation on the layered realities of womanhood—particularly in societies where a woman’s life is measured by clocks she never set. At its center, a woman holds her partner in tenderness, yet in her other hand, she grips a clock entwined with creeping vines. These vines mark the slow encroachment of expectation: when to love, when to marry, when to bear children, when to bend to ideals imposed from the outside.

Threaded through this intimacy is a vivid red serpent, moving beneath the embrace and over the overgrowth. Drawn from the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the serpent here is not simply temptation, but the presence of hidden knowledge—of deceit disguised as care, of tradition masking control. It becomes a symbol of patriarchal pressure: subtle, enduring, and heavy with consequence.

By invoking Eve, the work reframes the serpent not as a harbinger of downfall, but as an emblem of awareness—the difficult truths women are often forced to carry alone. The painting captures a tension familiar to many: closeness shadowed by constraint, love entangled with expectation.

This piece asks viewers to reflect: What binds us? Which legacies are we still carrying? And when does care stop being care and become something else entirely?