ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Peter Paintings

On a cool late summer evening when I was young, the taste of fall in the air, my mother took me and my best friend, Marylyn, to Provincetown for an evening out at the Fine Art Cinema to see “Expresso Bongo.”

It was an occasion to go to Provincetown from our small house deep in the Wellfleet woods. The streets of Provincetown were empty, the summer crowds already gone. After the movie, walking back to the pier where our car was parked, in the dim light I saw two women, short-hair, dressed like men, rough-housing in an amorous way. I stood transfixed, electrified. Somewhere I recognized these women. Somehow they felt familiar. Somehow they were me.

“Tomboys at the Pier” is my memory of that evening. I am the little girl in the upper right hand corner of the painting recalling that event. I used the Peter figure because she so exactly recalled what I remember seeing.

“Blue Little Girl” shows me as a tomboy holding a Davy Crockett comic book with the Peter figure hidden off to the left, protective and forecasting the future.

“Romaine’s Peter” is a lonelier version of Peter, off in the woods, and “Tomboy with Peter in the Sky,” shows a confident tomboy with Peter flashing overhead.

“Romaine Brooks and Me” reveals Peter in a sexy mood, and “Self-Portrait as Romaine Brooks” uses Peter as a vehicle to paint myself.

Other Peters show up in lesbian bars. And Romaine herself shows up in a monoprint as the “Lesbian Artist.”

Christina Schlesinger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Suzanne’s interview with Christina HERE. More about the artist at www.christinaschlesinger.com.

All images copyright (c) Christina Schlesinger and used with permission. All rights reserved. It is unlawful to reproduce or store these images on electronic media without the written permission of Christina Schlesinger.