Undeterred by what came before

I revisited an old friend for my latest painting. The Jane West doll first showed up in my studio a few years ago, and I had a feeling she wasn't done telling me things.

Jane was manufactured in 1966 as part of the Best of the West toy line, and marketed as an action figure rather than a fashion doll like Barbie. Instead of purses and stilettos, she came with a holster for her pistol and spurs that buckled over a pair of cowboy boots molded permanently onto her feet. With her branding iron, guns, and rubbery plastic wardrobe, which could be hosed off after a day of riding, ranching, and camping in the backyard, Jane was built to handle whatever a kid threw at her.

I don't say that to put Barbie down. Barbie evolved with the times and had a real effect on generations of girls, showing them they could be anything they wanted. But there was something about Jane's never-a-hair-out-of-place molded bob, the way she could get filthy and still come out looking like a million bucks, that told a slightly different story: a girl could do anything. Jane wasn't delicate. She didn't have to be protected from her own adventures.

In my latest painting, Undeterred by what came before (shown below), Jane stands atop a cracked-open classical bust, holding a fistful of matches like she's about to light something on fire. Maybe what she's really after is the old hatbox underneath her, where my mother's and grandmother's pearls spill out through delicate tissue paper, relics of a time when anything other than proper, lady-like behavior was frowned upon. If she gets her way, she'll burn the whole idea down.

I wish I'd owned a Jane West doll growing up. As a girl, I was a doer and a little rough around the edges, if my own tattered, disheveled "Weird Barbie" was any indication. I loved doing things my way, calling the shots, dreaming up adventures nobody asked me to dream up. But I also absorbed the idea that those instincts were somehow not quite right for a girl. Like a lot of women raised in the 60s, I spent a long time unsure of my own authority, and it's taken most of a lifetime to get comfortable claiming it.

Aging has been a positive thing for me in that respect. With every year, I become a little more myself, more willing to lead, more at ease putting my actual self out into the world instead of some tidier version of it. Jane never had that problem. She came out of the box undeterred by what came before her, armed and ready for whatever was next. I'm just now catching up to her.

THE PAINTING

Undeterred by what came before / Oil on linen / 30X36 inches