This is a gift painting done for my fiance's birthday and is thus laced with lots of personal symbolism. :-)

We both have a thing for Unicorns, so the Unicorns represent us--the male Unicorn on the left is Tom while the female Unicorn on the right is me. The red cord knotted around the Unicorns' horns represnts their unity and joining (and thus the name of the piece--a homage to the Pagan joining ceremony of handfasting, in which the man and woman have their hands tied together by a cord during the ceremony to symbolize the two becoming one). I didn't exactly *intend* this originally, but if you look closely at the general shapes created by the two Unicorns, their heads flow in a basic heart shape. :-) The roses are pink fairy roses, which were one of the two flowers that made up the bouquet of dried flowers Tom gave me on our first date (the other was lavender, which is his favourite flower, but with everything else going on in the border, adding lavender just made it too cluttered, so I didn't). The colour scheme represents autumn, which is not only the season of his birthday itself (which is in October), but is also his favourite season. :-)

And finally we come to the runes around the border. These are significant in two ways. The less obvious way is that runes were a sort of instant odd connection we had when we first met, a sort of foreshadowing of all the ridiculous amounts of things we had in common and obscure ways we connected. I always figured I was one of the only dorks in the world who could read and write in runes; on our first date, Tom brought me a pretty journal bound in leather as a gift, and on the inside cover he'd written my name and "from Tom" in runes. I opened the journal and read the inscription and then exclaimed, "Oh my God--I can't believe you can write in runes!" to which he replied, "I can't believe you can *read* them!" :-) The more obvious meaning in the runic border is what it spells: along the top is the word "Forever," on the left is his name (Thomas), on the right is mine (Jennifer), and along the bottom is his last name.

This version of the painting is not available for print, but a version without the runes in the border is: "The Hornfasting" (plain border).

Painter Classic, September 2003