"Tarantula" 2001
Acrylic on canvas 18" x 18"

Not too many animals have dances named after them. The tarantula does. A tarantule or tarantella is a dance that originated in Italy hundreds of years ago. Its rapid, shaking steps were derived from an exercise that was said to counteract the effects of a taratula's bite. So, the spider has become a symbol of music and night-time. Here, the tarantula crawls over 5 furrows in the ground, representing the five lines on a musical staff. A foreground cricket plays its night music, while plants take the shape of the bass and treble clefs of musical notation.