My Sin

Size (h w d): 36 x 24 x 0.75 in

Medium: oil on canvas

Provocatively named, this painting conjures up a playful mystery, it’s  slightly intense and held together by exotic colors. The very name can suggest many thoughtful phantasms for the viewing witness to imagine.

It would not be inconceivable to associate and enliven this painting with a woman so aptly named as Madame Zed, she was a mysterious Russian lady who created the fragrance Mon Péché or in English My Sin for Lanvin in 1924. The complex layers and subtle notes of this fragrance and it’s ultimate seductiveness can be seen in this painting.

So let’s be even more adventurous in the interpretation of this artwork.

Flashback to the year 1931 and the very popular and very sultry actress Tallulah Bankhead, she acted in a movie called My Sin. She portrays an infamous night club hostess in Panama. Although the movie is in black-and-white you can easily envision hot and sexy red and yellow even the movie poster in its use of red and it’s coquettishness is fiery and seductive especially to the imagination of this artist.

This is a pre-code movie so it doesn’t require a lot of imagination to follow the tempestuous and highly predictable trials and tribulations of a woman destined to transition from a vamp to a highly sought after and respected interior decorator in New York, but as typically is the case in movies like this, her past catches up with her by a chance meeting. But there is a happy ending thank goodness…

So what the “EXPLETIVE” does this all have to do with the painting My Sin? Well it needed a plot… there are so many interpretive options when looking at this painting I just thought I would create some fodder.

But as always I welcome your interpretations , your thoughts and your critical eye.

But be gracious like the supporting characters in the movie My Sin when they discovered Tallulah Bankhead’s past. Or like the very popular fragrance My Sin with its enticing effect of the ambrosia… but please spare me the odoriferous comments.

Rod Jones Artist