Members of the group were asked to take one of the provided photographs of women and place her in a setting that told a story, or suggested what she might be doing. The caveat was that we were not to suggest anything (gasp!) "deviant". I don't react well to that sort of instruction-- it brings out all my worst instincts.

As it happens, throughout the stormy day on which I decided to work on this picture the ocean was churning and rising with magnificent waves and breathtaking color, and so in coming up with an image I chose to be inspired by the Greek mythology of the god Poseidon-- but as our source photos were of women, I decided that rather than focusing on his own story, I'd instead combine elements from two stories in which he played an important part: Pegasus, the winged horse he sired, and Danae, whose life (and whose child's life) he saved after her father attempted to drown them at sea.

However, being in a rather perverse frame of mind-- and, as previously indicated, having very little patience or tolerance for people who allow their images to be used but worry about them being used in something that was somehow dirty, I not only created my own version of the famous tale of Danae receiving the impregnating "rain of gold", but decided that its source would be not Zeus, but Pegasus.

My point in doing so is to illustrate that art, in and of itself, is not "deviant" or dirty, or any of those other things that abysmally ignorant and hopelessly narrowminded people have always imagined it to be. I defy anyone to look at this picture and, in its appearance, find anything morally wrong with it-- to the contrary, it's almost... Disneyesque.

It's only what takes place in the viewer's mind-- where a knowledge of Greek mythology would be needed to fill in the blanks suggested by the look on the face of the winged horse-- that would suggest the rather appalling reality of what is being presented.

In any case, I had fun creating it.


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The rights to this interpretation remain with the artist. Do not use without written permission.