Eileen Young

In my Mother's House are Many Rooms (1994) - 5' x 4' - Oil on canvas

Objects of Desire (1996) - 5' x 4' - Oil on canvas

Our Knights in Shining Armour (1999-2000) - 4' x 5' - Mixed media on canvas was painted before anti-globalization protests began in earnest. I had seen an image of police in Indonesia, and was struck by how much the police resembled knights in mediaeval times. Ode to the Preservation of Democracy is perhaps my largest image, and was painted at the time of the Oka crisis in 1990. The title came from a comment of then Quebec premier, Robert Bourassa, who said that it was necessary to call in the army to preserve democracy, a concept which struck me as inherently contradictory. As history has shown, military interventions are increasingly justified on such grounds.

We Make her Paint her Face and Dance (1991) - 5' x 6' - Oil on canvas the theme of information technology (and their by-products of isolation and marginalization) is predominant: two wooden figures are trapped inside a machine. The machine is the metaphor for technology. This painting was also about the feeling that many women experience of being trapped by the expectations and structures of a patriarchal system. The title comes from a song by John Lennon, called Woman is the Nigger of the World, which he wrote after Yoko Ono talked to him about this experience of women.