Heqet

Heqet was an ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility, childbirth, and resurrection, often depicted as a frog or a woman with a frog’s head.

This illustration started as a simple drawing exercise, a way to practice rendering heads and incorporating animals and flora. While brainstorming, I wondered which culture had a frog deity, and I discovered Heqet. In Egyptian mythology, she was linked to the flooding of the Nile and the sudden appearance of frogs, symbols of renewal and creation. She was the consort of Khnum, the creator god who shaped human bodies on his potter’s wheel, while Heqet breathed life into them.

My obsession with frogs began as a painting practice that slowly turned into a fascination. The more I painted them, the more I wanted to learn about amphibians, their strange beauty, adaptability, and connection to both water and earth. Frogs are such interesting creatures, and even more fun to paint.

I like to think that our inner worlds are in a kind of dance with nature. Somewhere along the way, we’ve grown disconnected from our purpose, to be in creation with the land, to act as stewards rather than owners. This piece represents that connection: that we are nature, and nature is us. The gods, too, were born from that same connection, our attempt to honor and understand the forces that shape us.

As humans, we’re always trying to make sense of the unknown, the storms, the deaths, the cycles of life. Our imagination, our myths, our gods, all stem from nature’s inspiration.

I’m not one to follow a denomination, but I deeply appreciate belief systems that revere nature, that see divinity in the elements. To protect nature is to protect the gods: the god of water, the sun god, the moon god, and the god of frogs. The mystical lives in our gift of imagination, and that imagination is born from nature itself.