This is another piece, begun in a three-hour live-model session, that suggested its content. The model was wearing a tennis dress and I'd already set up my easel in the crowded room when the proctor placed the light directly between me and the model. Well, I'm always up for a challenge. So those elements set the stage. I added the tennis ball in what seemed a provocatively placed hand. This got me thinking about the trope in which we, men historically, blame women for their own seductiveness.

Since this blame is so familiarly aimed at Eve in the Christian Bible's mythology, I added the background element of the painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden illustrating the episode with the apple, a common theme in classical painting.

And so Eve is always being interrogated for her part in that 'crime', the original sin of self-awareness.