Penthesilea (Love is a Dog Bite) Painting

This image came out of the horrible climactic scene in Heinrich von Kleist's 1808 drama, in which Achilles is killed, not by Paris, but by the Amazon queen, Penthesilea. Taking time out from the battle field, Achilles and Penny decided to hook up, but there was a misunderstanding. Achilles thought he would take his new girlfriend back to the Greek camp, but the queen took this as an demeaning affront and a betrayal. You don't take an Amazon back to your place, she takes you back to her place. So she kills him and sets her dogs on him - and joins them in the feast. Later, she repents and joins her lover in death, but that doesn't take away the horror. I didn't know why I became obsessed with this image, I'm not into SM at all. I ended up pushing it back to the middle distance in the painting, so it wasn't quite so prominent, and in the foreground I put a reference to Poussin's "Et in Arcadia Ego," where the skull is saying, "I was in Paradise too," an awakening to mortality. And I set the whole thing out on I-30 in a post-collapse landscape. (You can watch the development of this painting here: www.warrencriswell.com/penthesilea_evolution.html.) It occurred to me later, during an interview, that maybe Penthesilea was the muse, who can also be a bitch. Now, as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that all this is an echo of a dichotomy that turns up often in my work: our animal urges vs. our human knowledge of death. When the elephants appeared, I worried that I was turning the whole thing into a Barnum & Bailey poster, but now I'm thinking that too may be appropriate, as we play out the human circus. PAINTINGS I use the materials and styles of the Old Masters to express images and ideas of the present, or timeless archetypes and myths set in our present day environments. But I have no formula or rules. Each of my paintings is a discovery, each with its own formula and rules. I never know what's coming next, I only hope it's something. The worst thing that can happen to a painter is to learn to paint. I approach each painting with fear and trembling, pretending it's my first and hoping it's not my last.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:48 W x 36 H x 2 D in

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