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Black CatMedium: Oils on canvas Size: 45x46 inches Year 2008 Black cats are considered very unlucky in the European and European-American traditions. Among Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavian people, it is said that one sets out on a journey and a black cat crosses the road ahead, one's only safe course of action is to turn back and return home. Tales of shape-shifting black cats and black cats who are in communication with the Devil are also a feature of European folk-belief. Concommitant with these negative feelings about black cats is the notion that they are particularly favoured as witches' familiars -- hence their almost universal use on Hallowe'en decorations. In bright contrast to this image of the "evil" black cat, there is a "good" black cat -- the antinomian lucky black cat of the African-American sporting and gambling world. This black cat does double-duty as a representative of the black arts (including the granting of invisibility and the return of lost love) and as a bringer of money luck. Or not! Signed at bottom left "drew"
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