feminism

Shapes of Desire / Lines in the Sand

Shapes of Desire / Lines in the Sand

Every one of us is the result of the coming together of a man and woman. Men and women attract one another. It’s as simple as the Madison Avenue maxim: “Sex sells!” There are shapes, movements, scents and sounds that all go into making someone of the opposite sex more or less attractive or desirable. The survival of the species relies on this attraction. Humans are complicated, however. There is the problem of male dominance ranging from wage disparity to the rape culture, which is on full display in the White House in the Trump confusion. (One cannot in honesty call it an administration.)

So two simple white lines on a hot red background with all the right bulges could lead the mind to thoughts of desire. Or the lines could be seen as battle lines in the war of the sexes.

Painting is acrylic on 17-7/8″ on 23-7/8″ stretched canvas
Price: $100 reduced to $50 plus postage

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Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

I painted this portrait of Rachel Carson while sitting at a picnic table in Menlo Park at Perkasie Pennsylvania’s Earth Day observance, yesterday. Earlier in the week, on Kid’s Corner, on WXPN Radio, I had heard the history of Earth Day and learned that there would never have been an Earth Day had it not been for Rachel Carson, and her scientific insights and tenacity. Yet she died in 1964 and the first Earth Day was in 1970. It was her book, Silent Spring, which had so caught Sen. Gaylord Nelson’s imagination and empowered his environmentalism.

It was the first time such a book, a scientific and fairly technical book had caught the imagination of the general population of the US. The title was the thing that did it. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and a chemist and had noticed how the pesticides, particularly DDT, accumulated as it traveled up the food chain to the larger, predatory birds, like hawks, vultures and eagles. One of its effects was to reduce the presence of calcium, so that the egg shells were so soft that they would be crushed in the nest during incubation. Theoretically, with the continued overuse of these pesticides, we could reach the point where we would no longer hear birdsong in the Spring. Another effect was actually making malaria resistant mosquitoes. She testified before the Senate. For this, she was mocked and attacked for being a single woman. Her character was questioned. She was slandered, even though she had made sacrifices to support her widowed mother and sisters through the Great Depression and adopted her orphaned nephew, etc., because she had a good income from her books.

The first Earth Day was not a convenient, fun event on a Saturday or Sunday to remind us to Reuse, Reduce, Recycle (which is a dubious tactic which only slows the path of consumer goods to ever-growing landfills). It was on a Wednesday. Over 20,000,000 Americans took part. No one really knows for sure how many. It was organized and ‘documented’ before the days of the internet or cellphones in schools of all levels. Many turned it into Earth Week, like the University of Minnesota did, with a week-long environmental “teach-in” and fair. I helped organize our Earth Day (April 22) at Carl Sandburg Junior High in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We started by hundreds of us, who normally rode the bus to school, walked and picked up litter as we came in and as we went home. That day, about half of the classes were taught outdoors and the lessons involved environmental, conservation or ecological themes. About 100 of us vowed to permanently abandon the buses and either bicycle or walk for the rest of the school year. This actually did reduce emissions as most of these were students who were those involved in after school activities who would quite often get special activity bus rides home, which now could be eliminated.

Earth Day was the closest thing that the US had ever had to general strike. Pres. Nixon was already under pressure from the Watergate investigation. Earth Day/Week scared him to death. He knew he had to do something about this. By July, he had started the EPA. He knew he could not survive in office if he did not respond to the people on this. DDT was banned. Emission and water purity standards were established. Mileage standards were imposed Speed limits were reduced. Air and water quality dramatically improved. Cancers and other diseases were reduced by millions! Now we have a buffoon in the White House who is trying to undo all of that! And we have a yarn bombing on a Saturday in the park instead of Earth Day.

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, on her family’s farm near Springdale, PA. She died of complications of breast cancer in her home in Silver Spring, MD, April 14, 1964. This portrait is in my “Heroes” series.

Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.

Price: $125 plus postage.

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Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto (June 21, 1953 – December 27, 2007) was the eleventh prime minister of Pakistan. She was the first modern world leader to give birth while in office. She was the first woman to head a majority Muslim nation. She was a complex character. I painted her because I consider her to be a rare, feminist hero. Malala Yousafzai considers her as one of her heroes and a key role model for her growing up in Pakistan. Benazir was Harvard educated and grateful for it. She had a tough time in her two stretches as prime minister. There were many intrigues, scandals, and attempts on her life. She was assassinated while campaigning for re-election. She fought hard for an independent Pakistan. She was not going to settle for it being a vassal state to the US or being dominated by a nuclear armed India, regardless of with whom that meant she had to deal.

Pakistan, and, indeed, the world, would be a different, and I would surmise a much better place, had Benazir Bhutto not been taken from us so prematurely.

The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.

Price: $100 plus postage

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Ana Pauker

Ana Pauker

Ana Pauker (born Hannah Rabinsohn; December 13, 1893 – June 3, 1960) was called “the most powerful woman in the world” by Time magazine in 1948. She was Romania’s Foreign Minister and the de facto head of the Romanian Communist Party. She was a breast cancer survivor. Her husband, Marcel, was killed for accused of being a Trotskyite in a party purge. They had lived in exile for being communists. She was imprisoned, then exchanged to the Soviet Union, where she trained and became part of the Comintern. When the Red Army entered Romania at the end of World War II, she was there and ready to take leadership as part of the Muscovite faction. She was second in command on the four person Romanian Communist Party Secretariat, but was regarded as the true leader. She was appointed as Foreign Minister, the first woman anywhere in the world to hold such a high level post.

What I find noteworthy about her tenure in these positions is that unlike so many women in positions of power, she did not feel the need to “out piss” the men like so many of the women since her (i.e., Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meier, Indira Gandhi, Hillary Clinton). She maintained friendly relations with Stalin and insisted that she was a Stalinist, yet she maintained that Socialist Doctrine allowed for more democracy, so did not force all of the peasant farmers into collectivization. She allowed more time for the five-year plans, and allowed amnesty for Spanish Civil War and French Resistance veterans. She worked toward healing and reconciliation as a path forward for more Romanians, rather than Stalin’s and later Ceaucescu’s hyper-masculinity. Her way was working. Stalin respected her and let her have her way in Romania.

When Krushchev succeeded Stalin in 1953, purges began throughout the Soviet Union and its satellites. Ana Pauker got scapegoated for the harsh policies that the secretariat had enforced  which she had actually opposed. She lost her party membership, but her life was spared and she was given a translation job. She protested her innocence and sued unsuccessfully for her membership back.  She was an easy target, since she was a woman and of Jewish ancestry. This was a fatal mistake for Romanian communism. The man they installed, Ceaușescu, to take over leadership in Romania was a megalomaniac and a misogynist, who ruined the country for generations. He outlawed abortions and all forms of birth control. He seized the forests as his own, personal hunting grounds to slaughter bears and other game at his whim.

Ana had another cancer in 1959 which culminated in her death on June 3, 1960.

Marcel and Ana Pauker had three children: Tanio (1921–1922); Vlad (1926-2016); Tatiana (1928–2011). Ana had a fourth child, Masha (born 1932 ), fathered by the Czech Communist Eugen Fried. Masha now lives in France. She adopted a fifth child, Alexandru, in the late 1940s.

The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.

Price: $100 plus postage

Fill out the form below so we can arrange payment and delivery. I take PayPal, so all credit and debit cards are accepted.