I love these flagrantly flamboyant femme fatales. Theirs is an art of illusion. They have created a persona that defies the strictures of biology. In the masks that they wear these gender illusionists are truly "Painted Ladies".

They personify a hyperbolic commentary on our concepts of feminine beauty and seductiveness -- the perfectly turned brow, long eyelashes, full lustrous lips, well defined cheekbones, glamorous clothes, and lavish jewelry. Their makeup and clothes embody a serious kind of play -- a theater of self and a special kind of performance art.

As in traditional theater, frequently the tragic and comic masks are juxtaposed. In the introduction to the book "Persona", Frank Browning says, "Effervescent exuberance and abject desperation are so often intertwined in the drag dream." When we encounter them we are amused and confounded. Gender ambiguity subverts our codes and expectations of male and female roles. Here adornment creates a mask, a subterfuge, that underlines and challenges the mask that we all wear.

See the work...