Bastet is an important figure to me both historically and spiritually. The Cat Goddess of Ancient Egypt has always been fascinating to me, ever since I was a small child. I am a cat freak and have had many cats throughout my life. Bastet is the epitome of cat worship and concentration. She protects me and my cats from harm and hostility from ignorant humans, so it is my privilege to present Bastet. She comes in dreams and has sexual inclinations, as she once did in Ancient Egypt, thus, the Goddess of Wet Dreams. The Ancient Greeks referred to incubus and succubus, creatures that visited mortals in their dreams in order to have sex with them. I have depicted her as a fertility goddess with multiple breasts and huge snake-like penises, a representation of the fertility of both sexes, male and female, as one. Bastet, the Goddess of Wet Dreams!
–Jayne County
Following County’s retrospective of her artwork at PARTICIPANT, INC in 2018, in January, 2020, Leo Fitzpatrick curated the first exhibition of paintings from Jayne County’s Bastet series in the Viewing Room at Marlborough Gallery in New York City. This show was reviewed by Linda Simpson for Art Forum, and art from this series was included in the book Trans History in 99 Objects in 2023 and twenty-five paintings from the Bastet series are presently on display at the Palm Springs Art Museum in A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic and Spirit, curated by David Evans Frantz, through October 18, 2026.
Offered here are sixty-nine paintings from County’s Bastet series.
I think that my art serves as a way of putting out a fuse before it becomes a ballistic bomb of some sort. Some people are at odds with the world and they become serial killers, and others become artists.
–Jayne County
In 2018, PARTICIPANT INC presented Jayne County, Paranoia Paradise, the first retrospective exhibition of County’s visual artwork, curated by Michael Fox. Although County’s artistic output began in experimental theater in the late 1960s–early ‘70s, including work with Theater of the Ridiculous and in Andy Warhol’s Pork, she is perhaps most well-known as a rock singer and performer. This exhibition took its title from one of County’s songs, Paranoia Paradise, which she famously performed as the character of “Lounge Lizard” in Derek Jarman’s 1978 film, Jubilee. Selections of her earliest known paintings and works on paper made in the early ‘80s while living in Berlin were exhibited alongside works made up until 2018, with approximately eighty pieces on view from County’s studio as well as several private collections. A presentation of related ephemeral materials from County’s archive, as well as photographs by Bob Gruen, Leee Black Childers, and Michael Fox accompanied the exhibition to further illuminate her legendary contributions to music, film, performance, as well her role as forebear and gender pioneer as the first openly transgender rock performer.
Offered here are thirty artworks from the Jayne County, Paranoia Paradise exhibition, along with thirty-four unseen works from this era.