Untitled

In December of 2003, Arena Studios hosted a new painting series by artist Emma Louise, 'Portraits of Queens of England who have reigned successfully and rather tragically in the British Monarchy.' The five feet by eight feet, mutilated paintings dominated the main reception gallery at Arena Studios, where they were on display for three months. The artist co-coordinated five women to sit in front of each painting for two hours during the opening reception of this new play space in SoHo; Elizabeth I by Mistress Dakota, Lady Jane Grey by Poizen, Jane Seymour by Remi Vicious, Anne Boleyn by Velocity Chyldd and Mary I by Ammo. The powerfully disturbing portraits were set off beautifully by each woman's performance.

Upon entering the Gallery, the first painting many guests were drawn to was Queen Elizabeth I, known as The Virgin Queen. There was no face on this Queen, just masses of braided red hair expanding across the canvas and bleeding into the huge white ruffle connected to the tight corset with rubber tubing. Looking at this painting made some viewers feel uncomfortably restricted and suffocated. The hands were replaced with boxing gloves bound with more intricate ropes and tubing. Mistress Dakota herself has enormous amounts of red hair and she represented Elizabeth. She sat in front of the painting drinking quite slowly and menacingly from her chalice, throwing her hair over her face to hide her features. Various people at the reception tried to engage her; she stared directly into their eyes peeking through her hair until they felt sufficiently ignored and walked off. She succeeded, and continued to sip her red wine and scrutinize everyone.

Artists quote: "I believe Elizabeth to be the most powerful. She reigned for 44 years and was never married. This is just not the way it was supposed to work: Queens were to produce heirs. The Queen's council was to basically reign for her. Elizabeth chose her role as Queen over role of wife and had her lovers locked up for fear of assignation and betrayal. She reversed the role. She ran the royal court and the country. Many attempts were made on the young Queens life but she was fearless and a master of political science. She was determined to reign successfully alone; she surrounded herself with a strong court and succeeded. Her reign was the most constructive in history. My painting is of a woman whose hair both covers her face and is bound to her extravagant dress.

Elizabeth eventually shaved her long flowing red hair and wore a very perfectly curled red wig with a severe appearance. For me this was a very strong statement of choosing her dominance over her court and country and extremely empowering. The paintings are dark and quite tragic as I feel the Queens had unimaginably difficult lives not only politically but personally; it must have been thrillingly depressing. Another element of the painting: the boxing gloves... she was a fighter; she was not assassinated and she was not executed. All the restrictive ruffles, tubing with everything connected quite simply shows that her sense of self and life was bound to her role. As difficult as her position was as Queen, she chose her life she did not step down and was not murdered. I feel it must have been an absolutely terrifying and exciting role to be in. She simply could not be anything else, she was in my eyes the 'Bondage Queen' and incredibly powerful."

Ending their reign at Arena Studios, the paintings will be on display at The Dollhaus Art Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the months of July and August 2004.

The Artist Emma Louise will have a one-woman show in the fall of 2004 in Chelsea.

www.dollhaus.org

Poizen as Lady Jane Grey

Jane Seymour