from the White Crow Side Show... When the kind of entertainment later known as the traveling side show was first beginning to form in America, many prominent doctors were still advising parents to keep their daughters away from anything resembling a real education, on the grounds that serious thought would damage female minds and reproductive systems, leaving girls barren, unhealthy, unfit for marriage--even insane!

In this painting, a perfectly ordinary young woman in Edwardian dress, looking half-amused and half-annoyed, is being displayed as a "freak".

I have used vivid colours and strange, exaggerated proportions to imitate the folk-art style of old "broadsides", the large painted canvases Freak Shows hung up as advertisements.

Featured on the cover of the summer 2006 issue of She Shines magazine! www.sheshines.com