"The Ukrainian Flapper"

(oil painting on canvas, 16X20, 2008)

"Girls have an unfair advantage over men: if they can't get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb."
Yul Brynner

"Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes."
Oscar Wilde

I've always had a thing for the Roaring Twenties. I take real pleasure in looking at photos from that time period. One day I was googling '1920's hairstyles' and I came across a photo of a young woman with bobbed hair and angular lips covered with dark lipstick. It reminded me of another photo that is forever imbedded into my memory, a photo of my eighteen-year-old grandmother from the late 1920's. I don't know much about her life at the time, but I remember that she was kicked out of Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth) for wearing lipstick which was considered by the ruling Proletariat as 'bourgeoisie' and thus inappropriate for a young Soviet woman. As I started working on the Flapper painting I was thinking about my grandmother and countless other women like her; beautiful, intellectual and fun-loving. The October Revolution and Communist ideology destroyed their youth and severely limited their potential. I enjoy imagining an alternative past for my grandmother, with her as a movie star surrounded by admirers, listening to jazz and dancing the night away. I'd like to believe that she can have the life I imagine for her where she is now.