At the end of the summer of 1986, Three Graces was moved to Le Baquiand there it was nearly completed in 1987. Early in 1988, an acquaintance brought Pierre and LilianeFarelle to see my work. They purchased this piece and some abstract work of mine also. Three Graces was installed on their property and finished in the spring of 1988.

I enjoyed the installation and finishing work and becoming acquainted with the Farelle’s. Pierre had been involved with the Résistance as a young man, before becoming a banker in Paris who then bought that beautiful property outside of Gordes to retire to. Liliane was an artist, drawing and painting abstractly, making poetry with her strokes of line and color. She liked to call the 3 Graces the “monument aux morts” or monument for those who died at war; she would proclaim this with a sly smile and a kind of conspiratorial wink to me.

In 1985 I was thinking a great deal about how the roles of women in the world had evolved and what could they be in the future. What was a woman to do? All and everything of course. So in a lightly ironic light, yet seriously also, I decided to recast the Three Graces. The male artists of the past (I couldn’t find any depictions of the Three Graces by women artists) seemed to agree upon a certain frivolous femininity when they imagined grace. However, in life there seem to be one main role for women: as a vessel of physical life, and every woman is expected to juggle her behavior between three aspects of that role: Maternity, Virginity, and Frigidity. I wanted to also depict some of the struggle also between the imposition of these attitudes on woman, and woman trying to choose between them. How to understand or at least maintain the juggling act of emotions, instinct, and intellect.

Virginity has the hair of snakes of Medusa, but she is not modest, she arches her back to expose her torso. Virginity is not about celibacy, she’s about ripeness and sensuality. Frigidity is veiled or hooded like Houdon’s “Hiver”, her head lowered hiding her face under its folds, but her left hand behind her back strains to pull the veil off. Maternity is coiffed with an 18th century chignon, but with the worried expression that she cannot keep together the trinity of roles she finds herself supporting in the 20th century.