Familiars of Dark Fortune - Opossom 🔴 SOLD

Oil and acrylic and fluorescent paint on gessoed icon board from the Ukraine, 20x15x2cm. Comes with a runes set, signed dark palette and fortune-gram (see additional photos).
This opossum sits at the threshold between survival and transformation, a creature so often overlooked, feared or dismissed, yet extraordinarily ancient and resilient. Behind it, the blackened sun edged with a fluorescent pink eclipse-like aura turns the animal into something almost devotional: a familiar illuminated by darkness rather than light. The storm clouds and distant lightning suggest upheaval and sudden change, while the glowing fissures in the earth bring fire up from below, evoking the underworld, destruction and regeneration. Even the small mushrooms emerging from the dark ground speak of life flourishing through decay,  the strange alchemy of turning what has ended into something new.
At its feet lies a rune of Algiz, traditionally associated with protection, instinct and defence ! This is particularly fitting for an animal whose greatest weapon is sometimes simply knowing when not to fight. Beside it, the deliberately oversized fig becomes almost an offering or sacred object rather than ordinary fruit. Split open to expose its jewel-like interior, the fig has ancient associations with, abundance, hidden knowledge and the mysteries of life and death; its exaggerated scale makes those meanings impossible to overlook. Together, the opossum, rune and fig turn the idea of “dark fortune” on its head: what appears lowly, strange, damaged or undesirable may carry its own protection, abundance and secret power.