Red Riding Hood 2001

As with most children, I was familiar with the story of Little Red Riding Hood from an early age. Re-reading the story now--or rather Wikipedia's synopsis of the many versions that have existed over the centuries--some 13 years after I did the painting, I have to wonder what version I had heard or read as a child. Was it the more sanitized version, where Little Red Riding Hood is saved by the Huntsman and Granny released from the closet after the wolf is killed, or the tougher version, where both Granny and LRRH are eaten, only to be pulled out of the wolf's belly(alive) by the huntsman after slaying the evil canine?  Whichever version it was, I know that the underlying theme, for me, in this painting,  is about being fooled, and not in a good way.  In this painted photograph,  the figure of the wolf is a photograph of a man I know who is a devout fundamentalist Christian, of course, transformed by my paintbrush into the Big Bad Wolf.  The model for Little Red Riding Hood is a young teenage girl, who, to my way of thinking, is being taken in by the wolf.  He wants to consume her with his proselytizing, lecturing, and preaching, wanting to convince her that she is a bad bad girl who can only find redemption by believing and accepting the strange rules of a vindictive and spiteful God.