Elektra The two large Elektra paintings 200 x 215 cm and 200 x 200 cm and related smaller works follow chronologically The Wondrous Heads paintings. I wanted to use a classical theme in a modern expression. Inspiration for this came not only from the original dramas by Sophocles and Euripides, but more directly from the 20th century operatic presentation of the theme in the text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and music of Richard Strauss. I use the German spelling in deference to the latter two artists. There is a tragic violence in all treatments, but I think particularly in the Opera. In these paintings there are sill lifes of bloody meat and bones. This refers to the killing of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus while the painting only shows Elektra and Chrysothemis. In one of the paintings, the severed head (which is the same clay model I used in the other paintings) is not floating above but is below in a pit. It is the human, not spiritual head, of John the Baptist. The presence of bloody meat still lifes or pig heads in many of my paintings is not always significant symbolically. It provides a still-life interest to me much as flowers and fruit might. Meat is immensely painterly in essence. It is fatty like oil paint and has a fluid structure which means open wild brush-strokes and thick impasto will never contradicted its inherent structure. However, it is true that the startling and perhaps sometime shocking appearance of a meat still life inspires a certain concentration or intensity of vision. My interest is not to please, but to astonish the viewer.