AMAZONS/CEZANNES
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The works that depict Amazons, the legendary (in both senses) women warriors of ancient Greece, are filled with a mass of anachronisms. In my renditions, these Amazons have needlessly removed their right breasts (in a misguided effort to smooth the use of their bows, for I have seen to it that they are equipped with cannons, the chief weapon of mass destruction of the 19th century. They defend against some unseen foe that wanders in a landscape with vaguely Cezanne-like attributes. These Amazons have amassed minimal skills in the use of cannons: to shield their hands from the heat of the barrels they use the hems of their skirts, a move that neither provides good insulation nor maintains a modicum of modesty.
The figures are a cross-fertilization between cartoons and those oddly shaped women of certain German Expressionists. It is in the trees, skies, rocks and roiling smoke that i mange to make a convincing conjunction of subject-matter and the formal arrangement of the overall picture. I do my best to evoke Cezanne's wondrous landscape formations. |
Defending Amazon, archival pigment print, collage and oil on board, 2011
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Defending Amazon, Sunrise, oil over digital print, 2011
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Defending Amazon, Moonlight, oil over digital print, 2011
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Prices range from $400 for the reworked monoprints and small paintings on canvas to $4000 for the giant constructed painting featuring "Honorary Amazon " that might be more akin to a biker girl. This is a technically complex work with painted areas worked in with raw plywood and raised sections that compartmentalize the composition.
Two Amazons Defending the People, acrylic on paper, 2013, 19x13
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Icon, acrylic and pencil on raw shaped plywood with relief sections, 2000, The 4-foot high Icon above isn't a depiction of an Amazon by any measure; she's more like an All-American Biker Girl. But with her heft and apparent authority over the miniature bishop--and over the viewer--she exerts an exquisite feminine power equal to that of the ancient female warriors. Let's call her an Honorary Amazon.
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Dreaming Cezanne Figure, acrylic and collage, 2016, 13x15