Julia Grid
©1987 Craig Ashby
12″ x 12″
Tempera

Julia Grid is an old tempera piece from high school. The Julia subject matter originates from all the paintings I did of nude female figures at Governor’s School. All named for the Eurythmics song from the 1984 soundtrack.

Those original acrylic paintings were a mess. On some level they were just a gay man closeting himself by painting female nudes. On another sadder level it showed how little I thought of women’s bodies.

You can still see all that here. But I think my interest in color makes it salvageable. They were all beautiful in spite of themselves.

Much later after I had done The Catch Trap I really wanted to reapproach this piece. Adding porn beefcakes to come clean. But then life got in the way.

The idea still comes to mind from time to time. Popping in and out based on new inspiration. I think of new media that could carry the piece through.

But every single time it falls through. The inspiration passes and I just don’t pick it back up. Maybe so much time has passed that the idea is dead for me. Maybe I have become so very different that I don’t even remember a way back to either of those ideas.