Some thoughts about bats

Apparently the bats that live around Cooperstown are particularly rabid.  It is recommended that anyone who has any contact with a bat at all should get rabies shots.  If you find a bat in your child's room and you do not know whether he touched the bat or not, your child should have rabies shots.  I helps if you tell the child that if he is brave the rabies shots will make him strong like Batman.  My son (age three at the time) had an entire series of rabies shots without crying because he wanted to be like Batman.    A year later a bat landed on my head while I was walking my dog and I had to have the shots myself.  I was not nearly as brave.  I grew pale and embarrassed myself by nearly fainting when I had my first shot.    Here is my painting about bats getting into peoples houses. At the same time as I was painting this, my friend Alicia Stallings was writing a poem about Bats--"Affinity for Bats"

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Posted by Ashley Cooper at 12/1/2006 10:06 AM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)

Icarus and Superheroes

I have made three paintings that sort of allude to the Icarus myth.  The first one was a really ghastly disaster from graduate school.  I only mention it because back then I saw the story as being about a young person's strivings, now, for me, it is about the stress of parenthood. Superhero 1 depicts a little boy in a cape jumping out of his tree house.  My oldest son wants to be a superhero so badly it may kill him (and this is just what I worry about.)  The mother reaches out the window trying to save her son. A younger sibling plays with a Batman doll as the father looks away.  Perhaps the father was the one who taught them to love superheroes in the first place?  On the wall behind the sofa and reflected in the window you can see that Degas painting, the Bellilli family, that I talked about in my last entry.  In my second Superhero painting I refer more directly to Icarus and particularly to Bruegel's paintings of the myth.  There is a baby pool, into which the child may or may not land (and would it make any difference anyway?)  The pool is much smaller than the ocean where Icarus fell.  The hot sun is in the background like in Bruegel's paintings.  The fates of things that fly are depicted by the bones of the prehistoric animals underground, the crow stalked by the dog, and the parrot  in a cage in the house.

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Posted by Ashley Cooper at 11/28/2006 12:55 PM | View Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)

My First Blog Entry: Halloween

My name is Ashley Cooper and I am a painter and the mother of two boys. I live in a small village in the Catskills.  My paintings depict family life.  Although they are autobiographical, they also contain a lot of lies. This painting is called Halloween.  Halloween is my favorite holiday because it provides such great opportunities for psychoanalysis.  My painting is a re-interpretation of a much better painting called The Bellilli Family by Edgar Degas (see entry in Other Peoples Paintings.)      In the Degas painting, there is obvious tension between the male and female sides of the family.  Some people think Degas didn't like women all that much.  I depict the tension between the father of the family, who is still in touch with reality, and a mother and two sons who prefer to think of themselves as superheroes.  Some people think I don't like reality all that much.    The little fru-fru dog in the corner of Degas' painting has been replaced with a cat.  Another cat can be seen chasing a rat through the Bilco doors into the basement.  The painting also shows part of the  upstairs bathroom and an abandoned Darth Vader mask in the upstairs bedroom.  When losing touch with reality it is important to be able, quickly, to switch from hero to villian as circumstances require.     In the room behind the kitchen there is an easel supporting a painting of a house on fire.  Can a house so divided stand or is disaster awaiting this family.   Tune in next time.

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Posted by Ashley Cooper at 11/27/2006 12:45 PM | View Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (0)