Randolph's response has been an abiding desire to preserve and nurture an in creasingly fragile nature; The opposition between technical or industrial forces and the natural phenomena they threaten forms a principal dynamic tension in Randolph's representation of existence.

The first time I saw a work by Lynn Randolph was in 1971. I was the juror for a regional exhibition from the southwestern United States at the Oklahoma Art Center in Oklahoma City When I chose Randolph's provocative portrait of a nude young woman sitting atop an oversized crab (fig. 2) for a purchase prize, the museum director pointedly asked me if I would consider changing my decision. I didn't, and since that first encounter, I have followed the development of Randolph's art with interest and enthusiasm. Her work has often been subject to the vagaries of censorship because her imagery depicts elements of the human erogenous zone, a place where each individual's tolerance has a different threshold. Randolph has made a virtue of pushing the envelope of acceptability. The shock value of her subject matter is not intended to stir prurient interest, however but rather to force the viewer to deal more openly with his or her inhibitions. This method of discourse is an underlying construct of Randolph's intentions: Her impatience with the status quo of a patronizing society invigorates her responses.

eviewing American art history, one can point to a number of precedents to Randolph's paintings. The acuity of John James Audubon's pictorial techniques (see fig. 4) led to an appreciation of naturalist causes in the mid-nineteenth century. An underlying agenda in Audubon's rendering of birds and animals, though, was the sensuousness and luciousncss of the subject matter, used as a surrogate for sensual, even erotic emotions suppressed bv nineteenth-century society. In a similar fashion, Georgia O'Keeffe's pioneering modernist works, especially those depicting natural forms, often carry a sexual charge. Randolph's various creatures and flora portray recognizable natural forms, but thev also readily evoke sensuous associations. For the artist, these sensual scenes assert the primacy of the life force.

Randolph's surfaces, her handling of paint, and her affinity for dream-state subject matter also suggest comparisons with the work of a number of Surrealist artists. Meret Oppenheim portrayed an erotic realm in the larger body of her work--not just in her infamous fur-lined spoon, saucer, and teacup (originally entitled "Fur for Breakjast"). Man Ray, in his allusions to the poetry of objects, regularly dealt