Still Life by Bianca Dorso, including Self-Portrait by Georgia Seaver Thomas (1881-1976).
 
Georgia Gladys Seaver was born in Traynor, Iowa and made the cross-country trek to California in 1883 in a covered wagon.  Her family settled in Pomona, where her father established the First National Bank of Pomona, and where Georgia graduated from Pomona College in 1904.  She then studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design from 1904-1907.  She married Dr. Roy Thomas in 1907.

Georgia continued to paint, making her home from the 1920s on at Muirfield Road in Hancock Park in L.A. until her death in 1976.  She exhibited her work at the California Art Club in Los Angeles (in 1922, 1928 and 1930). 

Provenance: collection of the artist, sold in her Muirfield Road estate sale, 1976, and acquired from the purchaser's Irving Street, Hancock Park house estate sale, 2008.

Georgia is listed in Edan Milton Hughes' Artists in California: 1786-1940.

In these times of financial and political uncertainty, people have been experiencing some fear and anger.  Or, if you identify the anger as a mask for the fear, then just fear.

People have different ways of handling that fear.  One way is to negotiate it down to something more manageable.  You whittle it down to a size that allows you room for comfort.  Self-righteous indignation can be quite comfy, for instance [They're all idiots; they wouldn't be in this mess if they'd listened to me].  Or you may want to dine out on a resentment [You made a big mistake in the primary and you are going to pay for it, and I will never forgive any of you and I hate you all now]. 

Or you may be inclined, like my friend Hilda, to take a "Level the Playing Field" approach.  "They're all crooks," says Hilda.  "They're all liars."

"And what does that get you, Hilda?" I ask.

"What does it GET ME?" she shouts.  "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.  I can't take any more of this Red State Blue State crap," she declares, turning down the talk radio in the background so she can make her point.  "I can't take all this back-biting and bickering and name calling and swift-boating negativity.  They ALL DO IT."

"Actually --" I begin, but she cuts me off.

"EVERYBODY," Hilda cries.  "They're ALL rotten.  They're ALL dirty lying bastards."

"Then what difference does it make who you vote for?" I ask.

"Exactly," says Hilda and exhales deeply, as if she's already feeling a little less stressed about it all.

This is the sad part.  It is hard explaining to Hilda that her response is precisely the intended outcome of a specific political theory's astute manipulation of basically good natured people, a systematic method of manipulation which has been proven more or less successful in the last 40 years and succinctly expressed in the film, "Thank You For Smoking."  It is not about proving your case, as the "hero" of the film explains to his young child (even a child can understand this).  It is not about proving your opponent is wrong, or that you are right.  It is simply about sowing the seeds of doubt.  Do cigarettes really cause cancer?  Is global warming really destroying the world? 

Once you get the doubt going on, the rest is easy.  This is how it works:

People love certainty because they like easy things, True or False tests, black and white, I'm okay and you are not, I'm saved and you are headed straight to hell.  Simple.  But people are also, generally speaking, not completely stupid and so they recognize that absolute certainty also leads to Nazis and Final Solutions and so it is Bad.  Especially if you have been raised in a vaguely liberal-minded world of compassion and multiple-choice tests where there may be more than one answer, except that choices lead to uncertainty and choices make you crazy because then you have to explain and defend your position and you could get argued down by a louder and meaner guy who just wants to win, and this is where the conclusion that it is not worth bothering is so tempting, and the idea that everyone is a liar and a cheat is so welcoming and comforting, a light in a window on a dark stormy night. 

Did CEOs James Cayne (of Bear Stearns), Richard Fuld (of Lehman Bros), Martin Sullivan (of AIG) and Stan O'Neal (of Merrill Lynch), for example, really cash out and make millions as the banking industry collapsed and we got stuck with the bill? [Source].  Okay, right, they did.  But can you do anything about it?  No?  Ah, well then, you see, it doesn't make any difference what you do then, now does it?

"It's about lack of control," I say to Georgia's self-portrait, which is propped up next to Dad's old Royal typewriter and a china dog he gave my grandmother when he was eight, which would have been around 1924, which is to say before the last Great Depression. 

Georgia smiles enigmatically at me.

"People are scared because they feel they have no control," I tell her.  "Lack of control is their chief dilemma.  But, if you can cut everyone down to size, if everyone is to blame, then there are no good guys or bad guys, and it makes it easier for you to accept that nothing you do is going to make any difference.  You can blame everybody else and be off the hook and slip back into that unconsciousness you were in before the fear got your attention."  

Georgia gives me that slightly whimsical, "I've-seen-it-all-from-the-back-of-a-Conestoga-wagon," look of hers.

"You know what I'm talkin' about, Georgia," I say.  I'm quite certain she does.