Portraits can be more than the recognizable appearance of an outside person.   Many women recognize the dichotomy between band- aids and cake in this picture.  Intense pleasure gives the illusion of taping the self together.  But, cake is insufficient tape plus one piece of cake often leads to another causing fat-guilt.

Some notice the gun but see themselves as in not THAT much pain. Other people understand the cake band-aid connection but can’t see the gun. When these people are told about the gun they insist it doesn’t exist until a someone else puts their finger physically on the lower picture.

Chocolate Cake, Band-Aids, and Gun, always becomes less a picture of me,  and more a mirror of women viewers themselves.  nancymauerman.com

Chocolate, Band-Aids, and Gun

These are just two of about one hundred alligators on my bathroom wall. Why did I paint flying alligators? Why not. I painted flying fire blowing serpents on my living room ceiling, and four platypus, four octopus, a turtle, and over one hundred gold fish across my kitchen cupboards. See previous blogs for their pictures.  nancymauerman.com

Bathroom Wall I

I wake crusted in dry tears,

not fully shed but there all the same,

from a night’s sleep without John.

He’s gone to a glorious place,

leaving me less than half the person I’d been-

left me in a house beautifully prepared with,

friend’s he’d loved to ease my punctured soul.

Leaning Self Portrait In Pencil

My mother would fry up home made doughnuts, put them in a big bag and send them and me outside to play. I knew for a few minutes I was everyone’s best friend.  nancymauerman.com

Doughnuts – Abstract Outsider Art

The strikingly beautiful, tall, gorgeous blond woman in a formal little black dress, four inch high heels (and they sporting black bows which matched the large black bow on the back of the ladies dress and a smaller shiny black bow on her purse),said IT in a loud, controlled tragic tone. A hand full of onlookers latter insistently described her short speech as being delivered in a ‘terrible, tragic, hiss of a whisper),  The glamorous woman recalled, “Something happened to me many many long, event filled, years ago and it affects me still. A car hit my puppy! I miss him.”

Strip away the decorations and we get, “I own a dead puppy!” or the picture below.

Which  grabs you and makes you feel something inside or can call up memories of some kind?  nancymauerman.com

Troy – Graphic Yellow Face With Blue Background