MARIE ANTOINETTE’S CORONA
In pandemic my friends keep calling & emailing to check on me during “lockdown”; as the most ‘out-every-night’ social woman Seattle they probably assumed I’d go off the deep end. My studio - too often procrastinated - has become a haven of sanity (ok, all that candy I keep out there is also a lure. Yup, I’m doing my part to “Fatten the Curve” as per Fauci)….
Much of my art involves verbiage/puns and assemblage decorating my frames, plus I've always been a fan of classical portraiture (& people in general). The lightbulb moment struck: CORONA obviously means CROWN as well as COVID, so the CORONA QUEENS (all powerful women, another thing the world needs now along with laughs?) series was born.
The young (married at 14) french queen whose oblivious reckless spending, along with her husband Louis the 15th ignited the french revolution. She was actually brighter & more involved politically than the bastardized “let the eat cake” narrative suggests, but her subjects suffered from poverty, malnourishment, and disease. Marie contracted smallpox (known as the ‘Red Death’ or ‘The Speckled Monster’), as did 5 members of her family over the years, later she insisted on her husband and son receiving inoculations. Incidentally, Marie Antoinette syndrome is a condition wherein one’s hair preternaturally turns white for stress, alluding to M.A's hair allegedly turning ‘blanche' the night before her walk to the guillotine.
