Amy Crehore has a new painting up on her blog which, to me, looks more ambitious than most of the other works of hers that I've seen online.  That's the beauty of it all - so much of our work can be seen so much more easily now - and by a more select audience.

OK, where do I begin?  First, there's more than the usual amount of symbolism, erotic and otherwise (ie: Woman eating a banana, monkey looking at the banana but maybe sucking on the woman's breast - not sure - you can read it one way or the other - maybe she wants it that way). By the way, Amy also paints a lot of cats, mostly the house cat type, but in this painting, the cats are replaced by a Tiger (cat).  Not sure what the Monkey means vs. the Cats (that would be interesting for Amy Crehore to talk about sometime - hint hint). The Snake is often the symbol of evil and you have a Tree (Tree of Life?) with a Monkey holding a flower hanging off a branch of a tree.  Two other monkies are sucking their thumbs.  The Flower is an offering but none of the other monkeys or the naked woman seems to notice. Meanwhile a Tiger that reminds me of Delacroix's tigers are sleeping yet supporting the main naked woman who's still eating the banana.  Talk about erotic symbolism - the painting is full of it - but is more rectangular, longer,  than most of the other works I've seen.  As there are plenty more bananas hanging off to the right, there's plenty for everyone to eat. Meanwhile, there's a black figure peaking out from behind the tree, his face blending in with "eggplants" or large plums that are growing around the tree (unless it's some other kind of fruit). What's not clear to me is the meaning of the Red Pelican; even if Amy Crehore is not trying to be use the symbolism in a deliberate way - still the images have meaning beyond  what the artist intends it to mean. The painting might relate the purity of the Garden of Eden, but then again, with the erotic symbolism, something more is going on - and what makes it good is your wondering what "that something else going on" is. By the way, if Amy would like to know blogs that are similar to hers, in particular the blog post of the Banana Eater Painting - try this search on Similicio.us http://similicio.us/search.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Famycrehore.blogspot.com%2F2006%2F07%2Fbanana-eater-painting.html&submit=find+similar

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And while I'm finishing up for today I'd like to direct people to this mention of one of my other blogs, http://www.webmetricsguru.com/ which was just voted the Top Web Analytics blog by Avinash Kaushik. And now I'm about to collapse - spent the afternoon and evening in the Emergency room with my wife who developed a foot problem - we'll have to see how that goes.  When it rains - it pours - but maybe not on the Monkeys.