"The painting came after I saw a small painting on a wooden panel, once part of a shabti box and now in the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The scene depicts the mythical Lady of the sycamore, the goddess of the tree that provided eternal life and knowledge of the divine plan in the afterlife. In the painting, she is offering water and fruit from the tree to the kneeling mortal and her Ba, the animated manifestation of the deceased that appeared just before resurrection. This is portrayed as half bird and half human. I wanted my painting to be about, time, the divine, and the out of body experience. I was thinking about symbols, rhythms, and narrative. The transition from the mortal world to the eternal world of light." - Sofia Mitsola, 2020. The scene is composed of two canvases that make one and emphasise the passing. The figures’ poses and staticity make an austere and geometrical synthesis. The tree, emerald and ballon like, is pregnant with turquoise and hot pink balls that are fluttering up and down like a dance. The figures are depicted the moment they become aware of the viewer’s presence and look back. The kneeling mortal is extending her arm to reach a single drop falling from the tree while bathing in warm golden light. Her naked body, flushed and heavy is adorned with only her Pom Pom slippers. Opposite stands the five-limbed deity, placed in a gravity free world, sculptural, toned, unmarked by time. Her arms are turning into branches yet her figure seems somehow autonomous, making tree and goddess both single and double, separate and one." - Sofia Mitsola, 2020