When in search of a dynamic composition for a new painting, I go to museums--to steal. I made the painterly equivalent of a "cover tune" in "A Cute Girl". The "tune" I covered is a masterpiece that hangs in the Louvre: Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa", painted in 1819. Gericault painted it to commemorate the handful of stalwart and lucky survivors of the 1816 wreck of the French frigate Medusa, which sank near Morocco. 149 people set off on a raft and considerably less made it through the entire 27-day ordeal. Acts of savagery and cannibalism increased as the desperate days grew in number.

The title of my painting is an anagram of Gericault's name.