In 2013, I read a Facebook post that bothered me in the extreme.
I once read a Facebook post that bothered me in the extreme. Oddly, it was later deleted by Facebook due to its "obscene" content, which I found puzzling, as it was only telling the Truth.
It was a Warning from the War Mongers
“I started to think about men’s destruction of women.”
The Facebook post was the picture of a naked black woman lying face-up on a dirt path. She was positioned near a tree, and she was obviously dead. She had a small branch from a tree (yes, it was obviously a branch from a tree) inserted into her vagina. She had been impaled. She had been left at the foot of the opening into a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a warning to others from the foot soldiers of the war mongers.
I started to think about women and rage.
So, I embedded her body deeply at the top center of this painting. She was the first thing I put on the canvas. She is so small, so insignificant, but she was the genesis of my thoughts. I started to think about women and rage. I started to think about men’s destruction of women. On the right side of the canvas, I put a small palapa; it made me think of the stories I had read of child prostitutes in Southeast Asia who would be required to see as many as 60 “clients” in a day --- at the age of 9. Little girls are the tastiest meat to the Predator. On the far edge of the left (and wrapped around the side of the canvas), you will see a boot print over the face of a Victorian spinster. She has very little value if she's not going to bear children. And then the modern woman, bleeding from her center, her gas mask her only identity, her thin frail body having undergone so much surgery and alteration that she scarcely knows who she is anymore. These are the women I was thinking about when I painted this piece.
“She had been impaled with the branch of a tree.”
"What's Happening in the DRC?"
49" x 71" acrylic on canvas