Wounded Lion

small craypas drawing

Catman

craypas drawing, 16" x 20", Seroquil

I wanted to do a full frontal nude drawing of my first husband. He has muscles from working out weekly at a gym but he also has a very large stomach. I found his bulk and curves to be strangely captivating. He agreed to pose for me as long as I didn’t show his face and I made his penis larger than it really was.

My husband had a favorite male cat named The Little One. When I took a Polaroid picture of The Little One the cat was very angry about being held. The angry cat’s face on my husband’s body results in a slightly menacing creature.

The sky is a stormy black. An angel hovers between the sky and the ground. In the background the landscape fades into the far, blue distance. Three horses gallop across the plains. The yellow flowering plants in the foreground are squash plants. I stood in a community garden and drew them from real life.

Dogwoman

craypas drawing, 16" x 20", Seroquil

This is a companion piece to Catman. I used my own body for the nude and put my female dog’s face on my body. The sky is still black and stormy and the landscape still fades off into a blue distance. But while Catman’s dark sky was interrupted by a break in the clouds, here there is a rainbow. Dogwoman also has a falling or hovering angel. The wind has swept the angel’s hair across her face making her as anonymous as the angel in Catman. Two wild pigs stand still. The purple plants in the foreground are small weeds that I found growing on the side of the road.

What Jack Saw

large oil on canvas, took several years to make, Seroquil

This is Jill dancing with a strawberry on her head. She is not wearing any underwear. When Jack and Jill fell down the hill Jack saw up Jill’s dress. Her vagina is what he saw.

The white dress that Jill is wearing is a copy of a couture gown designed by Viktor and Rolf. Her face is based on a Polaroid picture of my own face. The tall forest of flowers and leaves was all based on real life sketches of tiny, six inch plants. These plants grew wild like weeds from where I picked them. The strawberries were also sketched from real life and then eaten afterwards. The strawberry plant of course does not exist in nature, but I saw a picture in an art book of a medieval ivory carving that gave me the idea for it.

There is, in this painting, a hint of a threat. One of the giant flowers is leaning over, perhaps ready to fall on Jill. She eyes it warily even as she smiles.

The idea for this painting started with a tube of paint. I fell in love with the strange color of light cobalt green. I wanted to make a painting with a sky this color. To contrast with the beauty of the light cobalt green I then picked what I considered to be an ugly green to serve as the leaves of the plants.