Entwives : Garden of the Entwives, original upcycled vintage painting

With this altered painting, I wanted to transform the peasants harvesting apples, into Entwives tending their gardens. I transformed the clock tower, into the mountain landscape of Mordor, which stood on the horizon of the Gardens of the Entwives for hundreds of years.

In Tolkien's "The Two Towers," Treebeard spoke fondly of the time during the First Age “when the world was young”, when Ents and Entwives lived together in the forest. The Entwives were skilled at growing fruiting plants… but gardening in the forest would have been limited. So they started to develop the land across the Anduin River, and after the War of Wrath, the Entwives settled there permanently to tend their gardens.

They would cultivate the land for several hundred years, teaching the Elves and Men their horticulture practices for getting the most produce out of the land. All the while, the Ents would come to visit them, whenever they felt a longing in their hearts to see their Entwives.

Ultimately, during the the War of the Last Alliance when Sauron implemented a scorched earth policy and utterly destroyed the home of the Entwives. Their demise is almost certain, though rumours that some may have escaped or been captured has been hinted at by Tolkien. 

This vintage print on canvas titled "Apple Picking" c1883 by Walter Osborne (1859-1903) was collected locally in Ontario. It was unusually made, with a lot of packing tape used to seal off edges... which took me a little while to clean up! The frame is in very good condition, with a little plaque along the bottom. It's quite a decent sized frame. 

"Garden of the Entwives"
altered painting by Heather Castles

40 x 53 cm (15.5 x 21 inch) vintage print on canvas

Roughly 60 x 73 cm frame (sorry, haven't had a chance to measure it back in the frame!)