In 1990, Dave began seeking me out again. He held out the possibility to me that we could reconcile and "carry on in a more positive light", as he put it. Seems we were at cross purposes. He attempted to apologize for trying to avoid his responsibilities in making me pregnant, but I wanted him to apologize for telling lies about me after it happened, the greater transgression in my eyes. Neither apology was accomplished. Instead of acknowledging the past and putting things right, he withdrew once the damage was done. Cast off the opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation because I did not perceive that a brief embrace between us was supposed to serve for the entire apology and I was not supposed to press him for more than this. It wasn't what happened in 1978 that inspired the series. We were young and stupid and that can be forgiven. No, it was the failed "reconciliation" of 1991 that lit the fire. I had been betrayed for the second time and I had to do something to save myself. I couldn't walk the earth with murderous rage in my bosom and let it destroy everything around me. Naked Dave originally began as a way I could cathartically extract the poison this man brought into my life with his cowardice. Projecting his own unbearable guilt onto me and dismissing my existence by perpetrating a calumnious myth he invented that I am some kind of dangerous psychopath (like his dear friend, Bettie Page). These paintings became an entire genre of my life's work, one that has brought me recognition. (Though, not the only recognized thing I've ever done with my creativity, that's for sure...) The publication of my project brought a healing flow of empathy from others, but also vilification from comic book geeks and others too emotionally shallow to understand why I had the need to make this art and disseminate it on the web. Many missed the irony and took "The Angriest Woman in the World" dead literal as a personal vendetta as if there wasn't enough to be angry about, just having to live as a woman in this screwed-up world. One woman's revenge is another's individual justice.

For many years I assumed that Dave was merely annoyed by my paintings of him but I was wrong. In recent years I discovered that he was deeply affected by what I had done. The only friend we still had in common beseeched me in an email to forgive him, but I found it impossible to do so without face to face reconciliation. In 2005, when I offered an olive branch to Dave through a go-between, he refused. True to his real nature, he claimed himself as the sole victim of this tragedy. As if my justified resentment sprang unmitigated by anything he had done, and that he bore no blame. Now that he is dead, face to face reconciliation and forgiveness between us is not possible. I have to live with this reality and find the way to forgiveness without the reconciliation that I knew long ago I would never see.

My motives for this project have been the same since I started. To heal from the injury inflicted and diffuse my anger by having fun with my past pain. The issues this unfortunate relationship brought to my life, and my ability to process them through my art, still inspire me. When that changes, I will be done with this series. To aspire to make great art one must know truth, beauty, and love. My muse, as unwilling a subject as he may have been, was a muse nonetheless. The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a muse, Elizabeth Siddal. A recent book about her life has the following quotation from John Ruskin which took my breath away with it's truth: "And yet Elizabeth had been loved tenderly, loved by the man and by the artist, which is to be loved twice, because painters have a tenderness for the creature that suddenly realizes for them, in an exquisite and living form, a long cherished dream, and lavish upon her a gaze that is more thoughtful, more intuitive and, to put it plainly, more charged with love than is possible for other men."

Below is a study for the last painting of the Naked Dave series. I have known since February of 2005 that Dave was ill with cancer. I was sworn to secrecy and struggled with continuing the series, but the heart sees what the conscious mind can't bear to know. I placed the monarchs in the painting because the Aztecs believed they carried the souls of the dead. I started this latest painting in July 2005. I will continue to paint Dave until I am done and I can bring peace to myself.

At the end of 1999, I was contacted by Laura E. Perez. Assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, who used slides of my paintings (including Naked Dave) in a course she was teaching on "The uses of blood, spirituality and the human heart in art".   Some comments on this web site from the Professor: "I thought that "Naked Dave, a Woman's Obsession" Is positively insane in a way that I can understand. (but) I do not literally think that Naked Dave is insane but I did want to communicate that I think it works. It is "insane" in the sense that "normal" people are supposed to let bygones be bygones etc. What I think is terrific about the site is that it refuses to do this, to pretend that past relationships, past pain should go quietly into the night. As a viewer, and particularly as a woman, I see Naked Dave as a kind of exposé, and I feel emotional vindication and an identification with the will to not let the past drop "politely," given that it is these ideas of propriety that are actually psychologically abnormal. The Greek statue and block of his printed name feel like a tombstone to me, and the whole site like a grief ritual. The insanity of your site is socially on target. It works especially well as art , in my view. Naked Dave is original, I've never seen anything like it".