BANSHEE Poster

© 2004 

Model: Julie Strain

Olivia: “Julie is right up there with Bella and Rhonda Ridley for me. These are my most animated models. I’ve painted them over and over again, for years, because they have great versatility, camera sense, and their personalities are strong. Julie has a large, aggressive cast of characters that I just play off of. She is my super-bitch-heroine-terminator. I had been sketching a predatory winged woman for a while and when Julie modeled for us again, I asked for this pose, which is actually a physically impossible position. We got close as we could, but what I had not foreseen was Julie’s gift of a face for my creature. I manipulated the body into a lunging position. In ancient lore a banshee is a female spirit that wails outside a house as a warning that a death will occur soon. I wish all paintings would fall together so fast and magically as this one did. I knew where everything belonged. Maybe, I saw her in the neighborhood one moonless night.”
Julie: “The skeleton tattoo is what Olivia imagined a dragon skeleton would look like. Who could argue?”