This painting, "Nude with Stop Sign" measuring 36 x 20 inches, came from me sitting at various highway construction sites and watching a very attractive young woman hold up traffic with her sign. NO, she wasn't nude but she was wearing very tight clothing and looked very attractive. I watched other men in everything from pick up trucks to BMW's watching her. I realized at all these different highway stops many if not most men look at the very attractive sign holders and think of them as objects of beauty and sexuality.

They are almost goddesses of a sort who symbolize this soft, tender feminine beauty in the midst of all this ugly mechanical and dirty construction. They aren't fashion models, they aren't wanting anything but to make a living for themselves and perhaps children. Yet there they are being ogled by men from all stations of life as an unattainable object of lust.

So, I liked the double meaning of the sign. On one hand it is what she is to the men who watch her, this beautiful goddess of the highway. Then perhaps she is also a symbol of what women do NOT want to be seen. As nothing but a sexual object when they are out there trying to make a living and doing what they need to do to support life and doing it very well. So, the STOP sign has a double meaning. One the simple sign the goddess in her beauty holds and the other the "STOP seeing us like this" of the whole situation.

Strangely the man who bought it had a very beautiful wife who liked it as much as he did and both for the two different reasons.