Flight from Scandal

Acrylic, watercolor, transfer print, ball-point pen on watercolor paper. Poplar frame. 20 x 28”.

Because He Hated me was the title of a really questionable romance comic from the 1950’s that I spent a good year analyzing, remaking, and re-imagining. 

In the comic, the heroine meets and marries a man who was initially rejected by her sister. While he claims to fall in love with our heroine, after they marry, he begins to treat her pretty poorly because he can’t stop thinking she is going to turn out loose and wild—like he feels her sister was.

It gets so bad, our heroine runs away from him—to her sister who is girl-bossing in Hollywood. 

Anyway, bro does not go to therapy, does not really acknowledge how messed up he was acting, but he sort of apologizes after chasing her across state lines, and we, the reader, are supposed to believe this couple will live happily ever after.

But anyway, the cover of the comic was pretty classic, so I used it in this piece. It’s so white, basic, stereotypical, and narrow that even while it’s familiar, it’s uncomfortable too. If you didn’t get any of that from this piece, that’s okay. But if you have very warm and fuzzy feelings, allow me to temper and complicate them by pointing out the crows, typically harbingers of misfortune and death, flying above our lovers heads.