If love is the most inexhaustible of human concerns, it is also the most fraught. In mythology, love is never a mere emotion — it is a force, a weapon, a punishment, and, at times, a divine calamity. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ancient world’s vision of love as embodied by its gods.

A goddess of contradictions, Venus emerges not simply as an emblem of love, but as its stratified architect—at once celestial, earthly, and sensual. In this layered account, her three lovers—Vulcan the smith, Mars the warrior, and Adonis the fleeting mortal—reflect the facets of her domain: the forged bond of union, the thrill of conquest, and the aching ephemerality of desire.

In this trio of woodland episodes, Diana emerges not only as huntress but as arbiter of purity, vengeance, and impossible restraint. Whether turning Actaeon to stag, slaying Niobe’s daughters in divine reprisal, or grieving her accidental slaying of Orion, Kip Baker’s Diana is a figure of tragic symmetry—wounding and wounded by the laws she upholds, forever walking the fine line between power and pathos beneath the forest canopy.