A Cautionary Tale
Catherine Roseberry
enamel paint on wood
63" x 63" x 20"
...vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 1:2
Standards of beauty change from culture, place and time, but all these ideals carry with them the same danger: entrapment. A Cautionary Tale warns of the entrapment of beauty; not of Beauty itself, but of those unattainable, indefinable standards we set ourselves against.
Four women lounge in a lovely garden, some place, some time. One sits within a bed of roses, delicately examining a yellow blossom, oblivious to her capture behind a wall of thorns. Another strums an instrument, head bent, eyes closed—but with ears covered, so she only hears the sweet song within her head. A young girl primps before a mirror, blindfolded, seeing what she alone wants to see. The fourth naps restlessly, looking over her shoulder warily for the next beauty coming along to take her place.
Painted on a three-drawer, late 1940s Moderne vanity, A Cautionary Tale continues my ongoing explorations of the condition of women. The lushness of the imagery was inspired in part by Indian miniatures of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Photos by Eric Norbom
