Description

The Story Behind This One

The phrase land of milk and honey has been promised in scripture and poetry for a few thousand years, and Joyce Lee finally sat down and painted what it would actually look like. The answer is stranger and funnier than any of the old prophets imagined. The whole sky is a canopy of dripping honeycomb, golden honey running off it in long threads, and beneath it a river of milk and honey stretches out to purple mountains at the horizon. A man stands on a cliff edge taking in the view, dressed in nothing but a flat cap, a purple striped scarf and socks with sandals, which somehow makes it funnier than full nudity ever could. A jug and a glass of milk wait beside him on the rock, and a bee the size of a dog is helping itself at the river bank in the corner.

And the honeycomb sky is doing something the crowd of 56 thousand likes definitely noticed, those rounded shapes under the comb are not clouds. It is the land of milk and honey taken completely literally, the nourishing, abundant, faintly ridiculous paradise the phrase always secretly described. The paint handling is what carries it, the honey actually looks sticky, the milk pours glow against the dark sky, and the giant bee is rendered with total sincerity, fuzz and wings and all.