The original source of this painting was my earlier work "Trust Me", a painting of a young woman walking on eggs while a white hen looks on. I've never finally completed it. Instead, one particularly black night, when the political world (the Iran/Iraq war was still raging; children were being sent to the front lines wearing gold keys to Paradise around their necks) and my interior world were in sync, I started over. It seemed to me that as nations or as individuals we keep marching through history repeating the same stupid mistakes based on the same greedy motives. I felt such sharp anguish that I had to do something quickly. I took the only primed canvas I had (which happen to be 6' x 6'), took the figure from "Trust Me" and copied it four times onto the canvas.
All this I did with great speed and anger, pausing only to blow my nose and sweep aside the tears which kept coming. To my mind, the painting contains my one and only self-portrait. A year later I painted out the strange dresses I had put on the figures, and also, at the advice of a friend, the big black letters at the bottom, WITH OUT EYES WIDE OPEN, (which remains, however, its title.)
