The subtle eroticism of Maddox's images becomes blatantly wanton in Full Moon Over Venus. A blond goddess is willingly strapped to a jumping stallion, a creature typically symbolizing aggression, male sexuality, and masculine initiative for women, i.e., all the elements of the animus. Her pleasure is apparent as she easily melds with the animal's full and unbounded movement, neither controlling the other.

Full Moon Over Venus, 1991

Martin Maddox's women participate in and are cognizant of their fate. Their eyes hauntingly search out the viewer with a supersensory force. The paintings declare each woman's personal strength and uniqueness in gestures such as the guiding hands in The Colony and The Quarry of the self-contained arm crossing in Property Line, Leda, and Morning Grace. There is a political dimension to Maddox's work, as well, simply in his portraying women with new powers, with murderous and fiercely libidinal urges. While creating new archetypes, he recasts old roles by making clear the feminine consciousness that informs them. These subtexts enhance what consistently emerges as his primary focus - the depiction of women knowing and embracing nature, as comfortable with the earth as they are with themselves.

 

Dr. Stephanie Gauper is a professor of Literature and Renaissance Studies at Western Michigan University. She writes extensively on women's psychology and spirituality.


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: essay "Classical and Symbolic Dimensions in the Paintings of Martin Maddox"
© Dr. Stephanie Gauper and reprinted here with her gracious permission :

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