Title: God Shave the Queen
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 72×48
Year: 2013
“Why say the poet and prophet are not often united? For if they are not they ought to be.”
— J.M.W. Turner
When I was a toddler I had a dream so vivid that it still seems like a reality leak, in which I am in Westminster Abbey, witnessing Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. I remember noting that she seemed barely older than my baby sitter. Years later I visited England and became aware of an imbalance between the sexes in the workplace and in politics, with even a declaration by someone that Maggie Thatcher was not actually a woman. So I painted this portrait of Her Majesty sitting in what I guess is the Silly Room in a Westminster Abbey as painted in actual Martha Stewart colors. The 5-o’clock shadow and the title were an afterthought. Really.