I have been fascinated by Richard Strauss' opera Salome for many years. The opera, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, concerns the notorious events surrounding the death of the Judean prophet, John the Baptist. John, or Jokanaan, is held prisoner in a cistern by King Herod. Herod fears the prophet and refuses his new wife Herodias' entreaty to kill him. Retiring from a feast Herodias' daughter, Salome, orders Jokanaan removed from the cistern. She attempts to seduce him and is rebuffed. Herod enters and asks his step-daughter to dance for him, offering anything, up to half of his kingdom, as a reward. She dances against her mother's wishes. Following the dance she claims her reward, the head of Jokanaan brought to her on a silver tray. Reluctantly Herod complies and Salome clutches the severed head and kisses its mouth. In disgust Herod has the torches doused and commands the guards to "kill that woman" and they crush her with their sheilds.

In the mid-eighties I began my first sketches of Salome. I was asked to participate in an exhibition celebrating the work of Carravaggio in 1988. I was given the assignment of painting John the Baptist. Although I consider it part of the series by default of the subject, the subsequent paintings were not realized until 1992. I have worked on and off on the series for a number of years, with the paintings varying from a traditional Biblical setting to the introduction of modern technology as is seen with the video monitors in the Salomes 1, 2 and 3. I have attempted to depict the decadent excesses of the opera while capturing the dichotomy of a teenager in love; a balance between innocence and lust, attraction and repulsion, desire and bloodthirst.