160 GSM premium stock, signed by the artist.

THE KERN BABY AT FULL HARVEST MOON, 2025
Oil on Canvas, 25 × 30 cm

September’s full moon is known as the Harvest Moon, Its light, rising large and low on the horizon, was said to linger longer, giving farmers precious extra hours to bring in the last of the crop before the year turned.

In many parts of Britain, the final sheaf was bound into the figure of the Kern Baby, as part of the Harvest Home traditions. Cut down at harvest yet kept alive through the winter and in some instances burnt at the end of the year where the ashes were then scattered to bring abundance for the upcoming year, it embodied the old belief that survival depended on ritual and continuity, that death must always carry the seed of renewal. In Scotland and Ireland it was sometimes called the Cailleach, the Old Woman of the Fields, a sign that summer’s plenty was ended and winter had begun.

Here, under the Harvest Moon, the Kern Baby stands in a stubbled field, while a spectral harvester brings in the last of the corn. Beyond, the Thames flows toward the glowing city of London, whose hunger for grain and goods has long consumed the countryside’s yield. On the water drifts a solitary boat, the ferryman, a figure from ancient myth, who carries souls across the river into the afterlife. His presence reminds us that harvest is not only about abundance but also about endings, crossings, and the mysteries of what lies beyond.

In Jungian psychology, the Kern Baby may be seen as the Child archetype, fragile yet enduring, carrying forward the hope of renewal through darkness. The spectral harvester suggests the Death archetype, the inevitability of endings. Between them, and in the shadow of the ferryman, lies the cycle of sacrifice and rebirth that has shaped human life for millennia. The Harvest Moon casts its red light over the field and river alike, illuminating a story of labour, offering, and survival that connects past to present, village to city, earth to sky and life to death.