Torture Garden

"Woman possesses the cosmic force of an element, an invincible force of destruction, like nature’s. She is, in herself alone, all nature! Being the matrix of life, she is by that very fact the matrix of death – since it is from death that life is perpetually reborn, and since to annihilate death would be to kill life at its only fertile source."

– Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden, 1899

Torture Garden is one of the painting/collages I was creating around 2013 that is a hybrid of original painting, original photography and collage elements that was developed through an iterative process of photoshop (digital collage), large format printing, and acrylic painting.

The original painting derives from an image I named "Venus" that I made in Photoshop a couple of years ago.

I started the painting by faithfully copying the image in the photomontage, but after awhile it seemed pedantic to me - I felt that as a copy of the montage it lacked my personal touch and style, so I stopped looking at the photo and improvised all of the finishing touches. Now, I feel that I have created something that is distinctly mine. I think the ballerina legs of the original may come from a Henri Cartier-Bresson photo, but of this I am not certain - they are mine now!

The title, "Torture Garden," is of course a tribute to the famous novel.