Artwork by Johanna Uribes

This body of work started with the painting Cherry Pie Hat Woman.  Patterned loosely after my mother, Cherry Pie Hat Woman is a 1950’s styled housewife.  Her need for unattainable domestic perfection, actually motivated by her husband’s need, is what has caused her to snap.  Now she is in her own world in the back of her mind, laughing hysterically all of the time.  Frequently found at the top of a tree in her white gloves and black chiffon dress, she no longer cares if her laundry is springtime fresh.  She focuses on one thing only, making cherry pie, life’s pie.

The remaining characters were originally people I know, or so I thought. Yet, after the third painting was finished, I realized that these characters are all simply different aspects of my own personality.

My initial intent was to create a riddle within each piece, compelling viewers to interact with the images in the painting as they decipher its meaning.  After showing these paintings to several people however, I realized that everyone wanted to hear her story behind each painting.  Consequently, I wrote a guide to understanding this work, in the form of a short story titled Coma Dream.  Although the story is written in the style of a Grimm’s fairy tale, the paintings often make reference to the work of the Dutch Baroque.  Painted in a realistic, highly detailed style, these dark, intriguing images offer many layers of meaning to discover, with or without the artist’s guide.

The final discovery has been that there are many more of these edgy, mysterious paintings to come from the artistic mine field of this story.  But beware; do these images create the sensation of waking from a dream or a nightmare?