Courtney Beth Knowles
She Held Him Tight and Feared Him Not
2014,
multimedia,
dimensions variable
This installation draws from the centuries old Scottish child ballad of Tam Lin, a tale of courage and love. A woman, Janet, meets the mysterious Tam Lin in the woods of Carterhaugh and becomes pregnant by him. She must prove her love by holding onto him without fear while he changes from a wolf to a bear to a lion.
Over the years there have been countless versions of Tam Lin. I drew from the versions by American artists Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer to create my work. The concept of loving someone no matter what form they took appealed to me.
When people read a novel or listen to a song, images emerge in their mind, drawn from their own experiences. No one has the same experiences and therefore no one person would see in the same way. Ballads in particular are incredibly skillful in capturing the imagination and painting pictures. I wanted to take this ballad and visualize what I had heard.
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