The Fifth Day focuses on that cosmic moment before the arrival of man. In a bow to Genesis, the Six-Day origin myth has been paused in order to explore four natural systems –  sea, sky, earth, and wind – in all their pre-human new wonder and enchantment.

Perhaps - like the post World War One Surrealists – Hird was haunted by war and longed for a new collective mythos. To find it and to explore it, she has taken the vast panoply of cultural imagery found in different (and often competing) creation myths and has integrated them, weaving their iconic patterns into a collective whole. Thinking - and therefore painting - mythologically, was a seductively ritualized process that developed slowly. Each element makes reference to the other. The sky shares its gestural aspects with water and wind. The earth wears the shape and drape of the sea and the sky in order to create a seductive world of unspoken but deeply-felt personal mythology.

Hird would like to acknowledge Widad Kawar, whose textile collection inspired several of the paintings; Barbara Porter, Director of ACOR, Jordan, who graciously opened many doors in Amman; and Denise Schmandt- Besserat whose study of the anthropomorphic clay figures of Jordan left Hird mesmerized.