The Creatrix

by chris cunningham

(click image to see the full painting) One of my favorite painters is Mark Ryden. Although these days it seems almost cliche to like him, but I still do. In January, while in Seattle, I went to the retrospective show of his at the Frye Museum. A museum show is pretty rare for a living painter. This same show later moved to the Pasadena Museum of California Art where he added his current painting “The Creatrix”. I found this photo since I actually didn’t take one of it. Not sure where I found it either. Anyway, everybody’s been going gaga over it and I was hoping he’d make a print available on his website. I’ve been hearing the original painting is going between 250K and half a million dollars. Staggering numbers.

The title of the painting “The Creatrix” is a term for the feminine creator god. The pattern spiralling down her gown is a DNA helix. There’s a Virgin Mary pin on her breast and the Santa representing the birth of Christ. Also, the central area of her dress that looks like curtains is patterned with protons, neutrons and so on. Simple life forms like a jelly fish come after that and moving down you find a fish taking it’s first steps on dry land. The evolution theme is also seen in the background where on the left side you can see a dinosaur era and to the right mammals. All the way up front you can see an infant astronaut and on the left a beehive with a clock and skeleton on it. The clock says “Tell”. Other usual Mark Ryden trademarks are an Abraham Lincoln head up near the neck line, a piece of meat, and random numbers and bugs that line the gold of her dress. Ryden also has his frames hand made in Asia. The same themes can be seen in it’s carvings. This is his masterpiece.

Being on his website mailing list, I hadn’t received anything saying there would be a limited edition. So last Tuesday as I was looking at some gallery sites that deal in Ryden’s work, I found one that said “The Creatrix” was now for sale on the official website. Oh shit, I better look… there it was for $200 and wasn’t sold out. A 200 quantity edition was released. I filled out the form as quickly as I could to lock in my order. Everything went smoothly but I didn’t receive a confirmation email. I clicked “get mail” all night long and hoped. Nothing. I checked the next morning and the site said the edition had sold out, but I still hadn’t received an email about my order. Damn, I resigned myself to not getting one. The next morning I checked my email and there was the confirmation email saying I was order number 305. Crap! Maybe that means they took extra orders in case people’s credit cards are faulty or what not. Also in my inbox was an email from Porterhouse ANNOUNCING that “The Creatrix” was going on sale! I found out later that their email system got hosed or something and none of the emails went out announcing it was on sale. Needless to say there were a lot of pissed Ryden fans that missed out. So I was one of the few that had the window of opportunity to place an order. The only problem now was if I was actually getting it with order #305. Yesterday I received an email from UPS saying I should expect delivery today. Yes!! So, knowing what a hot commodity Mark Ryden is, I logged onto Ebay to see if anyone had posted their print yet. Good lord! Someone has already sold theirs for $1300! [LINK] They seem to be consistantly selling for over a thousand. Well, mine showed up today in a huge fat tube. I even washed my hands before carefully opening it and looking at it. I got #153. Not a bad $200 purchase.

Oh, and happy days with Starbucks [SBUX] coffee too. I bought a bunch of its stock a month and half ago on the dip it’s up 20% for me already. I don’t even drink coffee! I’m a friggin’ Warren Buffett.