What could be more fun than a bath with booze and boobs and tipsy pink elephants? This is a painting without a moral or a cautionary tale. I was most interested in depicting decadence for decadence sake with humor and a lack of shame.

Our lady's rage has gotten the better of her and she is roaring a malediction to the very powers of creation to change her circumstances. Perhaps we have all felt like we were difficult to put up with or that the world around us was reproachable. This three headed tiger sits on a lotus dais from the Eastern traditions attributed to one who is an god. As she rages, the lotus, a symbol of enlightenment are set afire suggesting that all one's efforts to be holy and good can be lost in an instant of bad behavior.

In this self-portrait as my alter ego, I am painting and trying hard to stay on task as I am assaulted by several demons that wish to provoke me away from my work. This painting combines elements from four historic painting subjects: The Penitent Magdalene, The Temptation of St. Anthony, St. Luke Painting a Portrait of the Virgin Mary, and Medusa. Medusa was an innocent who was punished by being turned into a monster, and she was rehabilitated like Magdalene, however; the demons in her midst may lure her back to evil ways against all her efforts to be pious.

This composite female is falling towards earth on an anvil and her fate appears to be doomed. She is a combination of three source images: Memling's depiction of the damned, Foucault's Madonna, and her lower torso is from a pin up. This painting suggests that a woman who uses her physical attractiveness to the allure of the opposite sex, may have power but it is not with out is its consequences. The title is purloined from a mis-quotation I found in my grand father's belongings after his death. «Everyday I do the best that I can, I intend to keep right on doing this until the end. In the end if things come out all right, what people have said against me will make no difference. In the end, if things come out all wrong, twelve angels swearing I was right would make no difference.» The original quote is by Abraham Lincoln and had only ten angels swearing.

Falling in love with this Rosa Bonheur painting upside down, I sought a compliment to this disorienting scene. As I work, I collect images of specific subjects including Magdalene's and Mary's crying. It seemed there was a pun at work that also served the composition by place these sad ladies in opposition to inverted Bonheur. While attempting to reconcile a title that would not only incorporate Gauguin's Vision After the Sermon; Jacob Wrestling the Angel but also a story I had heard of Benjamin West who was once ill, shut in a dark room with only a pin prick of light, and how he had observed inverted cows projected upon his ceiling. Seeing this phenomenon he must have wondered if this was the end; yet instead it turned out he had merely discovered the camera obscura.