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THE WORKS OF WARREN CRISWELL (Continued) The painting that finally broke the Cardinal's grip on me was A Woman Dragging a Man (1994). Worn out by the internal struggle, I painted myself being dragged down from the mountain by my patient and long-suffering wife. An earlier painting of the Question series was called All the King's Horses (1992) in which there were no figures at all, only the table where the interrogation had taken place and fragments of the broken egg, no longer glowing. Now I reconstructed myself as Humpty Dumpty (1994). |
 Humpty Dumpty, 1994, oil on copper, 20 x 16 inches |
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 A Woman Dragging a Man, 1994, oil on wood, 39 x 48 inches |
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| The work of the last four or five years is too close in time for me to want to say much about, but I know as I approached the Big Six Oh in 1996 I became obsessed with Time. Like Faust, I was eager to violate its laws and ready to strike any deal the Devil might have to offer. Unfortunately, he has yet to appear. Meanwhile, the redheaded goddess of love and youth, in her divinely cruel indifference, became the central focus of my work, if not my life. She is seen here in Salome (1996), The Offering (1996), The Seer (1997), Rachel Stealing the Gods (1997), A Man Following a Woman (1997), Double Indemnity (1999), the Black Stockings linocuts (1999) and many others not in this exhibition. Only now is she beginning to fade, but her image still haunts my work like a ghost. (The Samaqueca (2000).) | ||||||||||||
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