Painted Turtle
13 April 2021 POLYPTYCH & GROUP PAINTINGS 1. PAINTED TURTLE In an earlier posting (5 April 2021) I referred to an assembly of four photographs of the changing seasons through the door window by my desk as a polyptych , a term usually associated with paintings. Painted Turtle, above, is a more traditional polyptych. Polyptych literally means "multi-hinged." This triptych of three paintings is exactly that: The three framed paintings are hinged together. And Painted Turtle is also quite literal; it is a painting of a painted turtle ( Chrysemys picta ), the most common turtle in North America. The paintings are acrylic on canvasboard. Look closely and you will see a band of glyphs which I have isolated here... The symbols are adapted from petroglyphs carved into rocks along the Susquehanna River and the northern Chesapeake Bay, a habitat where the painted turtle is widely found. They may be as much as 4000 years old. There is an interesting posting by the Chesapea