A detail of Summer's Bounty II is featured on the cover of THE INFORMED GARDENER by Linda Chalker-Scott. Published by the University of Washington Press, available March 2008.

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MARIONETTES CONCEPT STATEMENT

This current body of work, “The Marionettes,” explores female identity through the images of fashion models depicted as puppet-dolls being manipulated by actual strings, as if they are, in fact, marionettes. The question posed here is asking the viewer: Do the myriad of glossy fashion magazines lure women into the unrealistic fantasy and desire to be breathlessly beautiful, dangerously thin, and exquisitely attired? Or are such gorgeous women, in fact, merely painted dolls, as implied with the suspended masks? The reverse side of each mask is an image based on African masks, real and imagined, that depicts the more primal, inner soul of a woman, not readily visible to the viewer.

*the paintings of the marionettes were inspired by photographs from a variety of fashion magazines and publications