Fabuloso
Oil, acrylic, collage, resin on wood panel. Pine frame. 36 x 40”
This piece is a playful combination of unconnected imagery to see what new meaning they create together.
We have an image borrowed from a 1980’s comic—“Larry told me all about you.” In the original context, this woman is a threat to the love life of the female protagonist. Does Larry love this blonde baddie more than the heroine? In the lower right we have two man-faced cats in a stand-off. This image is the “Kilkenny cats”, a political cartoon depicting tensions between different factions in 1840’s Ireland. In the upper left, we have the colorful and bubbly logo for the multi-purpose cleaner Fabuloso.
When all are combined, what new story is suggested here? I would love to hear your thoughts.
My first interpretation sees a larger than life, beautiful, and remote goddess looking down upon two men fighting for her attention. She knows all about them and they are uncertain they can gain her affection. I love the irony of this. Stereotypically, women are shown fighting for a man’s attention and aren’t tiffs between women often described as “cat fights”? This flip of a common trope is Fabuloso in my opinion.