The Dark Forest
Artist's Statement
Stephanie J. Ryan; 2023​

The girl’s mother often told her stories while she was sewing or chopping the vegetables for dinner; Stories about her home in Poland before World War II. The girl’s mother described her village and their little farmhouse in great detail. It was the place where she was born and where her family had lived for generations before the war changed their lives forever. The girl’s favorite stories took place in what her mother called The Dark Forest—which the girl later learned was the famous Białowieża Forest that stretched from Eastern Poland across a shared border into Belarus. The last remains of Europe’s old growth forest. The mother said it was ancient; she said, primeval.

To the girl, who lived in a slow, Missouri town in the middle of nowhere, these stories sounded fantastic. Probably because despite starting out in the real world, at some point the stories would take a turn to become entwined with the supernatural, the magical; elements of a fairy tale. This happened most often when a story entered the forest. There, animals, insects and even inanimate objects like sticks could talk. Witches, spirits, and demons were hiding in the shadows, waiting for unsuspecting victims to fall in their traps. Houses in the forest had legs, a doll could save your life, and being both pure of heart and clever were requirements for survival.

Obviously, I was that girl who listened to her mother's stories. As an adult now, I have thought about these tales for years. According to Bruno Bettelheim, “The delight we experience when we allow ourselves to respond to a fairy tale, the enchantment we feel, comes not from the psychological meaning of a tale (although that contributes to it) but from its literary qualities—the tale itself as a work of art. The fairy tale could not have its psychological impact on the child were it not first and foremost a work of art.”[1]

As a mother myself now, whose children are growing into young adults, I find myself revisiting certain fairy tales and their deep strands of wisdom that continue to speak to me even as an adult. This work explores the fears that I face as a parent whose children are entering an uncertain, and seemingly chaotic and dark world and face the challenge that every human being faces at some point in their lives: to find meaning in existence.