I took the name for this traditional linoleum block print from the ancient Greek legend of the singer Orpheus and his wife. Orpheus and Eurydice were deeply in love and happy, but on the night of their wedding Eurydice ventured out into a field (some say to dance) and was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus then descended into the Underworld and got Hades to agree to allow him to take Eurydice back to the realm of the Living, provided he did not look back at her on the way. Tragically, Orpheus looked back almost as he and Eurydice were about to be reunited, and she remained in the land of the dead.

The high heel shoe implies dancing to me and a beautiful woman, and the bear trap in the field shows the misfortune and the sudden snap of deadly jaws that sealed Eurydice’s fate. Below are the different sketches I made before making my print and adding watercolor to it. Eurydice was originally made for Hand Prints 2012 and went on to appear in mixed-media collage form in last year’s Earth Day Art Crawl (above).