Mother Goose and Papa Gander

Mother Goose and Papa Gander

25.5'' x 15.5''

The title makes fun of political rhetoric and hopes someone will notice the similarity in the sounds of the words propaganda and Papa Gander. Mallet raised in hand, a worker looms large behind a city and a vase of flowers on a busy little hill in the center of the scene. In his other hand he holds a thick stone slab. Behind him and looming even larger is the languid countenance of Missle Mama, above whose grey head a patterned swatch of color reminds me of a cheap scarf. It is a personification of destruction similar to the baby bomb I hold in Painter's Portrait. The big red flowers on each side are deceptively simple and pretty little atoms, like slogans saying good and happy on a package of fake food. The forms around the edges, cones, trapezoids, circle and ovals, are concepts of construction; our mental eggs hatching boxes, open and closed. These are all characters in our social fairy tale.