Women, Wine and the Canvas

Since women and wine are among the most mysterious forces in the universe, it’s interesting to see how painters throughout the ages have grappled with how best to portray them together. We thought a compilation of some of the most interesting efforts might be revealing.

Lot and his Daughters

Let’s begin with the very strange. Lot had a bunch of daughters. Some were married, two were not. When the angels came to Sodom and Gomorrah, the homosexual men of the city bombarded Lot’s house demanding that he send the angels out so the perverts could rape them. Lot offered them his virgin daughters instead (real winner of a dad, wasn’t he?). When they fled the city, only Lot’s wife and those two unmarried daughters came with him – the rest of his family stayed. His wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back at the destruction of the city. His daughters hid out in a cave with Lot while they figured out what to do. I guess they thought that nobody would ever marry them or something weird like that, so they decided to get their father drunk (on Wine, of course) and impregnate themselves with his seed (his daughters were just as perverse as him…creepy family dynamics this bunch had huh!).

Kathy Womack

Kathy Womack would be impossible to ignore when discussing women and wine. Her series Women and Wine has produced some of the most elegant work on the subject. She loves wine and it is quite apparent. “Inside every woman lies the secret desire to be a lady of leisure and live la dolce vida,” says Womack, and even though that desire may be a very, very secret one for some of us, it is nonetheless true.

Kathy is currently working out of her studio in downtown Austin and continuing to produce amazing pieces.

Eric Armusik

Born in 1973, fine artist Eric Armusikgrew up in the northeastern coal region of Pennsylvania. Once one of the largest coal mining operations in the county, his hometown was a landscape riddled with the depressions of post-industry. This isn’t exactly the stuff of happy wine paintings but we’re including him soley because of the work Two Women.

We love it as wine becomes the central placement with these women who look utterly lost. We believe their depression, captured so brilliantly by the painter, was lifted immediately after drinking the wine in their glasses. Cheers!