PREVIEW — Arthemis (ad landing page)
If you have just come from the video — this is her, and this is the whole story.
Arthemis is a painting of Artemisia I of Caria, the queen of Halicarnassus who commanded her own warships on the Persian side at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Mixed media on canvas, 120 × 120 cm, painted in 2024–2025 by Maryam Moghaddam, an abstract figurative painter — women, myth and movement — with studios in Newmarket, Ontario and Sweden.
The story of Artemisia
Artemisia ruled Halicarnassus, on the Aegean coast of what is now Turkey, after the death of her husband, as an ally of the Persian king Xerxes. When Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BC she brought five ships of her own and took command of them herself, the only woman to lead a squadron in that fleet. Herodotus, himself born in Halicarnassus, records that she alone advised the king not to give battle in the narrows at Salamis; he admired the advice and followed the majority.
In the battle, with an Athenian trireme closing on her stern, she rammed and sank an allied ship in her way; her pursuer took her for a friend and turned aside. Xerxes, watching from the shore and believing she had sunk an enemy, is said to have exclaimed that his men had become women and his women men. The Athenians had put a price of ten thousand drachmas on her capture. She sailed home untouched, and afterwards it was her counsel that sent the king home to Persia.
How the painting is made
In the artist’s words: “Here she rises from the prow of her ship, sword raised against the storm, hair streaming like wind made visible. Framed within a luminous sphere — moon, shield, and destiny at once — she is carved from sea spray and defiance, her gown dissolving into the very waves she commands.” The sphere glows amber against a clouded blue sky; the sea breaks white around the dark hull. It is mixed media on canvas, built up in layers, the figure and the water sharing one brushwork. The artist places it in “the thread of mythic Persian women that runs through my work: guardians who do not wait for calm seas.”
See new paintings first
Once a month I write from the studio — one painting’s story, what is on the easel, and first view of new work before it is listed.
Where it would live
At 120 × 120 cm the canvas holds a wall on its own. The blues and teals stay cool and clear in north light, and in the evening the amber sphere warms the room like a lamp. It belongs where decisions are made — a study, a boardroom — or where people arrive: an entrance hall, a stair landing. Navy, teal, charcoal or white walls all suit it.
Collect
The original Arthemis (120 × 120 cm, mixed media on canvas, CAD 9,500) is a one-of-a-kind work, signed by the artist, shipped crated and insured worldwide from Newmarket, Ontario with a certificate of authenticity: see the original painting. The same image is also available as a fine-art print on paper, canvas, metal or acrylic, in square sizes from 14 to 45 inches: see the Arthemis print.