Where is Joseph's Coat Now? Painting

The rabbis love to interpret missing parts to a story and to fill in the gaps. The rabbis link the garment worn by Adam and Eve through Biblical generations and including to Noah to Nimrod, to Jacob and ultimately to Joseph. Through these stories, humans were part of the environment, and the coat can be seen as a mantle of responsibility that humans can put on. The garments were stunningly beautiful, and hand painted with animals and birds and engendered trust between Man and animals. The coat provides a metaphor for humanity’s relationship to our environment and to nature and yet also points to how that trust is so often betrayed. I pose the question – ‘Where is Joseph’s Coat now?’ Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and the coat was stained with goat’s blood, torn, and ruined to convince his doting father that Joseph had been torn apart by wild beasts. This sibling betrayal left the coat eclipsed for millennia. In my painting, the cloth of this coat re-emerges tantalisingly. It is degraded but still beautiful and hovering by Humanity as an option, a fragile provocation, a reminder and sign of hope. The new coat that I am envisaging is about mending, patching, re-constituting, and about permeability, where our destiny is inextricably linked with the survival of Nature and our interdependence. Co-existence or no existence. This painting is an image of permeability. The figure of Joseph is glimpsed. The layers of the composition are punctured; indicating the fragility of Earth’s protective atmosphere. Images of fossil and images of the cosmos sit side by side. Gingko leave have been pressed into the surface and peeled off, leaving traces. The micro and the macro are invoked; the metaphorical and mythological. It is overlain with impressions of the biblical coat. This painting stands alone and can be part of a pair with 'Where is Joseph's Coat Now' 2. It also works as part of a series of 4 paintings - see attached image.