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.

Cinderella

Oil on canvas, 11" x 14", painted over several years, started on Seroquil, finished on Geodone

A girl stands peeling an apple. She is wearing an outfit designed my Marc Jacobs. During its season it was photographed frequently for fashion magazines. At her side is a large oriental fish bowl with a glass top. This is a duplicate of a piece of furniture I own. On the side table are three apples, waiting to be peeled.

In the background is a kneeling, naked girl. She is facing a fireplace and has a small broom in her hand. With this broom she is sweeping up ashes. The fireplace has an ornate, carved mantel. On top of the mantel there are four lit candles and a glowing lamp.

The Proud Lion

craypas, done while on Risperdal

The happy, smiling lion is striped and has a blushing butt. The lion has a rope chain around his neck that runs through a loop on the carriage. The carriage is a fancy cage. There are bowed iron bars and a roof of grapes, purple fruit hanging amongst green grape leaves. In the carriage is a half naked, two headed woman. The hair on one head is blond, the other red. She lies on pink fabric. The earth under the carriage and the lion’s feet looks like cotton, quilting material. The colors are bundled into small patches which repeat. It is a very provincial and homey pattern. In the air, flying near silver clouds, are pigs with wings. The old saying that pigs with wings do not exist is not true in this picture. It implies that when pigs can fly, other magical things happen. Inside the sun is a crouching man.

Disaster is Coming

I like disasters. They get me excited. I am always exited at the beginning of a war. Usually the way I imagine it, all the pain and suffering doesn’t happen to me, it happens to other people. I watch, sitting down, while the images of others are projected onto a screen. I see them cry. I see the rubble. It can not be denied that the loss is terrible. And sometimes, in my dark heart, I wish that the disaster was happening to me.

I wish to experience a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake, a war or an economic depression. I wish for a catastrophic change in my life, something to get my adrenalin going, something that would cut me off at my knees, make me weep in despair, make me collapse in a heap on the floor. I want to be poor. I want to be desperate. I want to be horrified. Maybe I think that if I were in the middle of a disaster I would feel more alive. Am I less than fully alive right now? Yes. Give me the worst challenge of my life. Let me be tested and see whether or not I stay sane or go insane, whether or not I live or die.

Currently I am obsessed with the news that the country may be headed toward economic collapse. I follow the bankruptcies, and the fall, one after the other, of major financial institutions. I watch the decline of the stock market. I read the quotes of big men, men who have manipulated millions and billions of dollars, men who can see the future. I believe those who prophesize doom. It feels like every day draws me nearer to my doom.

In the last recession my husband saw his company let go half of their employees. Everyone who had been employed for less then five years was let go. My husband was second from the bottom of the list. In a recession things aren’t selling and people aren’t buying. Manufacturing slows and in order to stay profitable, manufacturing companies must shrink in size. Now my husband has been with his manufacturing company for a little over three years. Is that enough time to be considered valuable? Can his job only be done by him or can it be done by other people?

I fantasize about what it will be like when my husband looses his job and there are no more jobs to be found. I wonder what the cheapest food there is to eat. Rice and beans? Pasta? Tough or fatty meat? I have made my husband promise me that if he should lose his job we will go to the local soup kitchen every day to eat lunch. That would save us a lot of money. Of course I will have to buy bargain shampoo and house supplies at the dollar store, wear no more perfume, and buy all my pets the cheapest pet food. My dog has delicate intestines, she will probably develop loose stool or diarrhea. I will no longer be able to afford new contact lenses so I will feel ugly wearing old glasses. My husband and I will cut each other’s hair. Perhaps I shall merely allow mine to grow long. If our pants or shirts become faded and frayed we will buy no new ones. Only when something develops a hole will it be thrown out. We will no longer be able to afford new books so instead we will go to the library and see what they have there. We will reuse vacuum cleaner bags. We will reuse tea bags and perhaps run our coffee machine on the same grounds more than once.