two drawings

The top drawing is myself, painting, in a mode implying a puzzle.

The bottom drawing is not an image of Eve (though it's all right if people think so, or nearly all right if they think it - however, it's not right that they assert it). It is an image that is polysemous, sure, but in an hellenistic way: either Europe and Zeus (the bull) or queen Pasiphae and the bull of Poseidon (the sire of the Minotaur). Other clues are incorporated: a tortoise and hare, a fluted Greek column in the background. What about the snake (and this seems to tip people off in the garden of eden direction: nude woman and snake - gotta be Eve and the serpent [note serpent, not Satan - who is not in the garden episode; yet people seem to insert him into the garden episode frequently])? The snake refers to the Greek god of healing, starts with an A, sounds like Aesclypius but I'm not sure, as well as to the Cauducus that's part of the Doctor symbol you see on various medical buildings and stationaries. All ancient peoples loved snakes and naked women. For instance: well known minoan figurine is of a topless woman weilding snakes in her hands like thunderbolts. Snakes and naked women - not just confined to the Hebrews - who probably got the idea from the Persians anyway. If this was the garden of Eden, I'd have put a ziggurat, not the greek column, in the background, and included Adam, or a canvas of Adam being painted by St. Paul, who invented the way we see Adam now out of whole cloth supplied by the book of Maccabees.

Anyway, I really like this drawing. I did it on CPE day as some speaker rhapsodied on about Evon Agazarian and system centered group processes. Benzene molecules and various chemical diagrams are in this drawing. And it has a nice overall tonality - I've saturated just about every 1/8th square inch of it with my quick tiny darting pen strokes. Rapture.

A whole segment of christiandom awaits rapture - conspicuously that segment that seems most divorced from knowing what rapture is or being capable of it.

What if some sect decided to make a central doctrine out of the word orgasm. The climax of God's kingdom here on earth. Jesus shall come ...

I'm sure that's been done before. It's cheap. Cheap and beneath me.

Still I like both these drawings. The top one hasn't had quite the career in generating misconceptions yet.

Misconception - there's an interesting word.

I would hate to misconceive the immaculate conception.

That would be like misconstruing flowers at a wedding.

Garcipara's wife - that's a misnomer. An eggregious pun dependent on people knowing Redsox shortstops.

I like both drawings. They exhibit intricacy and inventiveness.

And the stars around the head of the nude woman refer to the stars around the virgin in the immaculate conception, and the virgin's prior identity with Aphrodite, the stella maris, the star of the ocean, as she was called, which ties the greek and hebraic symbols together. Another image that ties early christian with ancient symbols together is the image of Isis holding Horus [I think it's Horus, it's Isis' kid anyway]: looks just like a madonna and child. Much christian iconography makes use of precursors, Roman, Greek, Persian. These associations are mostly lost in the kitschified world we live in today.

Sigh.