really dismantled the old canon. In fact, modernism seems to have preserved Western traditions of sexism, racism, and colonialism intact within the analysis that forged its utopian models. Socialism may have at- tempted to forge a New Man, but the gender restriction in those words alone tells much about who is left out of the ideal world thus proposed. Randolph creates alternatives that face up to the present reality with its pervasive violence, not only at the level of wars and disintegrating societies, especially in the Third World, but also in the cities, in schools, within the family, and within the body. The sub- tler violence of racism is an issue Randolph never can let rest, and she returns to it in many different ways.

Randolph finds sources for content in a broad range of disciplines. Among these are contemporary science, which she uses to presage the evolution of humans, animals, and technologies into new life forms, placing her visionary images into contexts that include the urban present, the nebulae. the biological microworld. and a glimpse of Armageddon in our own backyards. Randolph hardly takes a Luddite position--condemning technology for ruining what is natural--since she, of course, doubts the rigidity of any "natural" order of things. Yet neither does she fall into what she dubs "technophilia," adoring new technology for its own sake.

Randolph brings together ideas of art, science, and tech-nology using a vivid visual vocabulary. Unlike much art related to technology, this work focuses on scientific thought and visions of the future--both utopian and dystopian--rather than on special effects employed to demonstrate the capabilities of a given hardware or to over-whelm the viewer with sensation. In fact, the innovation in the work is not technical: it is in the ideas of contemporary art and science that the artist explores.

Randolph filters information through her own process of assimilation. Often the information, as the viewer encounters it in her work, is imbued with double--or triple, or more--emotional vectors. An image can be ghoulishly threatening and at the same time funny.

Randolph's peripatetic approach to content is reflected in the widely varied artistic influences that she draws upon. Her highly developed skill as a painter comes in part not only from her study of early Renaissance masters; Mexican magical realists--such as Remedies Varo (see fig. 11)--and French colorists of early modernism, but from her deep affinity with these painters. Her ability to both think and feel, to simultaneously analyze and let herself react directly, is apparent in her attitude to these precursors in the history of painting.

One can see the impact of early Renaissance masters such as Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi on those canvases in which she engages contemporary and future-oriented issues. In the style that she calls "metaphoric realism," Randolph presents a visionary reality in vividly tangible terms, giving the work an intensity and edge that satisfy the human longing for images of the unknown. Technically, like both Italian and Flemish painters who were engaged in portraying a vision in palpable terms, Randolph paints in a hard style. She uses black to offset the richly colored figures and landscapes, eradicating areas to eliminate any distraction from the drama recorded in the iconography. The black, too, creates a dreamlike ambience, a background against which images cross, "floating in the unconscious,