Title: The Seven Susans of Seneca Falls
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 36×60
Year: 2017
Forget conventionalism, forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.
– Susan B. Anthony
There are 4 billion Susan B. Anthony’s in the Naked City and these are just seven of them, whom I call “The Seven Susans of Seneca Falls”.
It’s an army, boys and girls, and it includes all races, colors and creeds, and it’s a torrent you cannot stop, nor should you try to. You can build dams and levees but they will break. You’re betting on a bad game of Blockhead without even knowing the odds. Best you can do is watch closely, ask questions and pitch in, or stay out of the way.
In this painting, eyeglasses are become links in a chain for a common vision, and water flows from Susans’ hearts, then swirls and bubbles about to trim her clothing, in another connection, this one between woman and earth. There’s a lot of Upstate New York in this painting, with its 19th century traditions in water-cures, free love, high thinking, plain living, ditch-digging, spiritualism, activism &c.