Name That Trauma :: Reader MD2112 on a Forgotten Female Artist

Hello,

Your site is my newest daily addiction; I can't tell you how many repressed memories have been unearthed by reading the recollections of other readers…great work! Anyway, my personal trauma is a bit obscure, as it doesn't come from a movie, TV show, or book, but hopefully somebody can help.

When I was in my teens, somewhere around 1989-1990, I saw some sort of "underground" art magazine at a friend's house. In the magazine, there was a profile of a female artist whose name I can't remember, but her work was the stuff of pure nightmares, and has stayed with me ever since. The pictures were black & white illustrations (though that may have just been due to the B&W format of the magazine) of nursery rhymes and other images done in a horrific, yet realistic style. The one that sticks in my mind the most was a piece called "Rock a Bye Baby", that depicted a baby's crib perched high up in a treetop. It was a top-down, close-up view that showed the terrified child stuck in a tree screaming at the top of his lungs, just like the nursery rhyme says.

Another piece was a picture of a normal, everyday suburban kitchen. Everything looked perfectly normal, but if you looked really close, there was a small pool of blood oozing eerily onto the floor just at the edge of the frame; it was a brilliant picture that took a mundane setting and injected a horrifying yet subtle hint of the macabre.

The only other one I remember in any detail was a piece depicting a topless pregnant woman cradling her baby bump, but the baby bump had a face, as if she was carrying a Siamese mutant to term.

I believe there were a few other nursery rhyme-themed ones, but I can't remember what they were. In any case, I have been looking for these images online, or at least the artist's name FOREVER, and have come up with nothing. If this rings a bell with anyone, I would be eternally grateful for any leads.

Thanks & keep up the great work!

— MD2112

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader zombiefreak for positively identifying Laurie Lipton as the artist in question!