Straight Jacket
Liza Phoenix, 1996

The title of this work, Straightjacket draws the viewers attention away from the main visual of the piece, the dragon. The two elements are linked through the woman in between, and it is in her that we can make sense of the piece. The straightjacket is at once a metaphor and symbol of insanity, its only other regular use is by escapologists, and perhaps even that is significant in this composition. But here we do not have simply an insane person; we have an insane woman. Though perhaps not capable of such physical extremes as a man, yet equally given to complex and misunderstood outbursts. Her body is bound by the straightjacket, but her mind is free to wander to the full extent of its range and here we find the powerful, imaginative force of the dragon. The eyes are said to mirror the soul and to be a window on the individual psyche, and so it is appropriate that the dragon should emerge from this woman's eyes to curl in the air above her head like a malevolent thought, dripping hatred at its constraints.
-Silva

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