Goddess of Yesterday

Here's yet another painting from the vaults (and I promise to be showcasing some new art soon). Some years ago, when I read Caroline Cooney's wonderful novel about the Trojan War, "Goddess of Yesterday," I was inspired to do my own version of the cover- this time with a shoujo manga flair. The genius in Ms. Cooney's book lies in the casting of Helen of Troy as an absolute, unrepetant bitch; that's the chilly-looking blond in the upper left hand corner. Helen loves to make life a living hell for our heroine, the red-haired Anaxandra, who spends most of the book as Helen's slave. Anaxandra holds a primitive goddess figurine that is often mentioned throughout the book; it acts as both a talisman, and her guardian, through all the trials and tribulations that befall her.

The medium is light acrylic washes and colored pencil, on watercolor paper. It was my pleasure to give the original to Caroline Cooney, when I met her recently at a convention.

(A brief note about the costumes: those who know Bronze Age Greece will notice the generic drapery worn by the two women. The feeling in the novel was not of the strict accuracy as seen in, say, Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, with the bare chests, tight, corset-like belts and flounced skirts worn by women in the Aegean in the second millenium BC; it had more of a vague pre-classical atmosphere. However, it served the novel very well in my opinion. It's really worth a read.)