Medusa & her Sisters |
In classical mythology, Medusa was born a great beauty and cursed with her serpent curls as punishment for losing her virginity. Earlier myth shows her born ugly, one of a triad of daughters, offspring of the sibling sea monsters Phorcys and Ceto, who live exiled on 'Kisthene’s dreadful plain’* These three unnatural sisters, ill-begot, misshapen and outcast, thoroughly intrigue me. Since there is no imagery of the lesser known sisters, Euryale and Stheno, I have invented them. Their coral hair, crab claws and fishtails are inherited from their parents. Drawings and paintings imagine their lives in a landscape strewn with stone men. As this series progressed, other characters from story joined the Gorgons; Karen, the orphan girl dancing to her death in 'The Red Shoes'; Eve, falling in the Garden of Eden, the Moon with her wolf lover and Angela Carter's young Lizzie Bawden. In my small way, I am rehabilitating monsters.
* Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
* Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound