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BE AN ANGEL AND GIVE ME A BATH

A friend wondered if this is a dream or painting where the woman isn’t really visible to the bear, but the bear is still getting the benefits-kind of like a religious painting.

It is a soapy meeting of our normal world and a heavenly one. It could soften troubled times a bit. Be kind. Take a bubble bath.

The woman is from Ingres’ “Portrait of the Princesse de Broglie” 1851-53, though her skirt is from Fragonard’s 1780’s “The Stolen Kiss”. The woman has the wings of a Great blue heron. The little duck is a Ringed Teal, which has no business at all being in the Phoenix area where I live, but there he was. I grew and photographed all the roses in the chandelier over the years. I made up a bath with an extra generous amount of bubble bath, sat in the tub with my good camera and took hundreds of shots of bubbles.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

This is what happens in forest clearings when you’re not looking. Games are played.

The players here are artfully keeping an eye on the chairs and each other. Winning strategy.

A woodpecker is running the game. The stakes are high. A cake is in play.

EVE

This isn’t your Sunday School teacher’s Eve. This is Eve untamed, before the myth was written. No fig leaf, no shame, no banishment. She’s dealt with the fruit and come to an understanding with the serpent. She’s moved on.

Let’s throw around some adjectives: calm, unyielding, powerful, independent, sovereign.

She might say, “ I will not be mythologized. I am no longer part of the story. I am the story.”

I sourced this Eve from an 1879 photograph of Pretty Nose by L. A. Huffman. She was an Arapaho woman who fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. She was born in 1851 and died after 1952. Imagine.

She welcomed her great-grandson home from the Korean war in 1952. He told how she sang a war song in his honor, from one warrior to another. He said she wore beaded cuffs that indicated she was an Arapaho war chief. She was 101 on that day.

Pretty Nose has high status in Arapaho tradition. She represents the Arapaho role at the battle and also how women’s bravery flowed forward through families and generations.

Her clothes are handmade and ancestral – a buffalo robe draped over a showy two-hide beaded dress (1879 Metropolitan Museum of Art). She’s wearing her own earrings and we all want some like them. Her braids are my granddaughters’. We envy those too.

I adapted the landscape behind Eve from an 1850 painting “The Hudson River Valley near Hudson, New York” by an unknown American painter (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

You’ll see three magpies in the picture who clearly think the world of Eve. Magpies are important in Arapaho ceremonies. They are admired for being handsome and swift. And for bravely flying into camp and making off with food, like successful Indian raiders.

CHANGE OF CLIMATE

In “Change of Climate” bears cruise along in a vintage thunderbird convertible on a sunlit coastal road. The ocean shines beside them. They’ve brought inflatable beach toys and a picnic basket with a frosted cake for a celebration or farewell party.

A squirrel clings to the car’s antenna, tail streaming behind like a flag, joining the migration in comic determination. A small plane hums through the sky, piloted by another bear, as if the whole ursine exodus has taken to air and land alike.

Though the image is playful and surreal, an undercurrent of melancholy runs through it: the bears are trading pine and snow for surf and sand. It’s a lighthearted migration masking a deeper story about adaptation, loss, and the uneasy joy of finding new ground in a warming world.

I happily photographed the bears in Minnesota and the squirrel in the Arizona White Mountains. I found the pink Thunderbird at a car show in Pinetop, AZ. I adapted the background from an 1873 painting by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, a master of marine art.

A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME

Wasn’t it great when the bluebirds tied Cinderella’s bows. A little bird help is the best. The magpie and hummingbird told this woman something. Whatever has happened, this woman qualifies to burn things down. The magpie works the matches and the hummingbird holds the letter “just so”.

The woman is from Frederic Leighton’s 1855 portrait “A Girl”. The ring is from “Still Life with Golden Goblet” by Pieter de Ring, 17^th century. I extracted the handwriting from a love letter Prince Albert wrote to Queen Victoria in 1839. I burned some matches for this picture. In solidarity.

SAINT VALENTINE

Saint Valentine’s bird companion would, of course, be exquisite. While I was building this picture, I walked into a garden center looking for a new tree and BAM! There was the white peacock. I returned with my good camera and followed him around for an afternoon, taking hundreds of photos.

Saint Valentine and the peacock have bound themselves with a single satin ribbon and a locket. I wrote the word “Devotion” on a note card and kept it beside me while I worked. The curtains curve around the peacock and young man to frame them and seclude them.

Tokens of their fondness for each other are strewn on the table. Shared snacks, love letters, a key with a filigree heart on the end. The porcelain heart box with the gold peacock on the lid is from 1761. It’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Mazarine Blue” was often used by The Chelsea Porcelain Factory as a ground color at the time. The other objects are from Dutch Still Life paintings in the early 1600’s. For example, the cherries are from “Basket of Flowers”, 1622 by Balthasar van der Ast.

A MORE RATIONAL DAY THAN THE LAST

Things are looking up. The wind is in your hair. You’ve hitched a ride on a leviathan, off to somewhere delightful and completely unknown. You lean into the wind.

The cloud is the perfect cloud, the essence of cloud. Fortunately, I had my camera in my hands when I looked up and saw it. I photographed it and it was gone in a breath. It has mystery. It has gravitas. It has enough presence to hold its own, even in a picture with a whale.

I’ve never seen a blue whale. I’ve never seen a FLYING blue whale. I called this one up from my imagination, but it took a lot of thinking.

Bon voyage.

HIGH TEA

Chaos, tumult, havoc. Bighorn sheep have done a number on this room. And there goes the cake….

The room and its panels are a riff on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exquisite turquoise room, the Boiserie from the Palais Paar (constructed in Vienna 1765-72).

The teapot is really yellow and came down through my husband’s family. The teacup – in our family it’s the most prized teacup, because of its absolutely perfect fracture. I photographed the cracks on stucco buildings. We stop abruptly for good cracks.

The hostess is clutching her guest, trying to remain serene. We can see in the rabbit’s eye that he may not be a willing partygoer.

While I was working on this picture, I was struck by how Bighorn sheep have a decadent Rococo beauty all their own. They can jump fifteen feet, more if they spring off a sofa.

WILD ABOUT YOU

I made “Wild About You” in the month before a wedding in the family. Here, the newlyweds invite a few friends to celebrate on their honeymoon cruise. Also chocolate.

THERE GOETH THE NEIGHBORHOOD

We’re familiar with the Adam and Eve story. Here’s their arrival, as seen by the Garden dwellers. Eden may never be the same. The animals have their doubts.

I made the dome of the flying saucer from a photo I took of the Marble Church in Copenhagen when I lived there. Best Souvenir ever!

I made some of the animals from my own photos. Others are from Johann Peter Wenzel’s 1800-1829 painting “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” and from Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s 1600-1692 painting “Landscape with Exotic Animals”.

Adam and Eve are from Adriaen van der Werff’s 1717 painting “God hold Adam and Eve Responsible”.

The Background is a reimagined version of Fragonard’s “Le Rocher” 1780.

We’re familiar with the Adam and Eve story. Here’s their arrival, as seen by the Garden dwellers. Eden may never be the same. The animals have their doubts.

I made the dome of the flying saucer from a photo I took of the Marble Church in Copenhagen when I lived there. Best Souvenir ever!

Adam and Eve are from Adriaen van der Werff’s 1717 painting “God hold Adam and Eve Responsible”.

The Background is a reimagined version of Fragonard’s “Le Rocher” 1780.

If dogs had mythology, this would be their goddess – the woman with the leash and the ball. I wrote down the word “Glorious” and kept it near while I worked.

The goddess figure is a Diana. A huntress is what dogs are looking for in a goddess.

This work follows stylized French court portraits of the 18th century. The Goddess is from a Portrait of Madame Bonnier de la Mosson as Diana by Nattier.

Keep your eye on the ball.