C’est La Vie

when I was in high school I had a literature teacher who had a policy of unlimited extra credit. All you had to do was read a book by a notable author (his discretion) and have a little chat with him after school to prove that you read it. No limits, no need for variety (one month I decided I really loved Kurt Vonnegut and just read everything of his I could get my hands on).

One of the big differences between how Yanessa treats Wick and how Primus treats his children is that for being a viper I think Yanessa genuinely believes she loves her little ducky. It’s just that her version of love is for a grandson who can’t do anything without her. It doesn’t matter that he was weak-willed and naive, in fact she’d prefer for him to remain that way. Better for her to be in control of him and follow her lead. The love is conditional, but she still sees it as true. But we all heard what’d she would have done had ducky tried lying to her. Her hatred for Wicky would have been just as special as her love for him.

the thing is. if you’re going to structure your story as a struggle between a protagonist and an antagonist who symbolize a struggle between larger ideas, you have to let one of them lose. really truly lose. otherwise your story’s meaning just… kind of collapses.

Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back. The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act. For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body. The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser. Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology. Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.