The jaguar was originally painted by Audubon in 1849. I reinterpret the jaguar using charcoal that is both organic and fragile, messy and ephemeral. She emerges from a collage background of bible pages. 

During the later half of the 19th c. the medical profession united with legislators and eventually clergy, all white males of course, to criminalize women’s healthcare. The Comstock Act (1873) criminalized women learning about their bodies including menstruation and birth control. Legislation was also created refusing admittance of women to medical schools such as Harvard and criminalizing homeopathic and herbal remedies practiced by poor women to induce menstruation when pregnancies were unwelcome or dangerous.  In 1849 specifically, Wisconsin criminalized abortion as a felony offense. 

The jaguar expresses her displeasure, railing against the confines of subjugation.