Wicked Cool

A little Hocus Pocus. A little ET. A little Motown. Somehow, it all works. The horn-like hair and that incredible yellow lipstick are what really make this painting pop. They give the figure an immediate personality which is slightly strange, slightly fabulous, and completely impossible to ignore.

She lives somewhere between Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus and a lovable little alien who wandered in from ET. There’s something wonderfully otherworldly about her, but she never feels threatening. If anything, she looks like she might be about to do something delightfully ridiculous.

And then there’s the pose. She’s performing “Stop! In the Name of Love” by The Supremes, which adds an entirely different layer of visual and cultural shorthand to the piece. Suddenly we have Motown glamour, 1960s choreography, a little witchy drama, and an adorable extraterrestrial all occupying the same small wax-string body. That is a lot of pop-culture iconography for one painting.

But somehow, it works.

Part of what I enjoy about the piece is that none of these references completely takes over. They bounce off one another. The hair gives us the theatricality. The lipstick gives us the humor. The alien-like qualities give her an unexpected sweetness. And the familiar gesture of the Supremes' choreography gives the figure a sense of movement and recognition. The result is a character who feels both familiar and completely made up.

That’s one of the things I love about these wax figures. I can start with a shape, a gesture, a color, or a tiny visual reference and suddenly a personality begins to emerge. Sometimes that personality makes perfect sense. Sometimes it’s a little harder to explain. This one, I think, is best explained by simply looking at her. She’s strange. She’s sweet. She’s glamorous. She might be from another planet!