"The offering or self-portrait as a modern Eve"

(oil painting on canvas, 24X36, 2008)

"If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?"
Uknown

"The body of a young woman is God's greatest achievement. Of course He could have made it to last longer, but you can't have everything."
The Gingerbread Lady

"One of the reasons I don't see eye to eye with Women's Lib is that women have it all on a plate if only they knew it. They don't have to be pretty either."
Charlotte Rampling

I always have a hard time making myself look pretty in my self-portraits. On this particular self-portrait I look as if I were suffering from Graves' disease, which is not all that bad in comparison to some of my other self-portraits. It's somewhat ironic, since as an artist I have the power to make myself look as beautiful on canvas as I wish. Perhaps, I don't use this power in my art, because like a lot of other women I already use it in real life (with make-up, etc).

Quite unfairly any woman has this advantage over the majority of men since a woman can become a femme fatale almost on cue while most men have to work hard to get noticed. I imagine that even in Biblical times poor Adam had to somehow impress Eve, as opposed to Eve who only had to be present and bat her eye lashes to get his undivided attention.