The connection to the alien hybrid narrative isn’t restricted to the infant waifs. After her marriage to Walter Keane ended and the waifs became less a part of their business, Margaret painted fictional young women, and they were unusual looking.
As we’ll see these paintings could be portraits of hybrid entities captured at some point along David Jacobs’ iterative scale of human / alien convergence.
As we’ve seen with the waifs there is evidence that Keane’s art is an unexplored and unrecognised contributor to the library of images available to be referenced by abductees or experiencers, whether they retrieve these images in a normal state or while under hypnosis.
That people independently arrived at similar images of dark-eyed staring children speaks to the primal allure of those images, and is, perhaps, the same quality that Margaret coincidentally tapped into and which helped her art to sell so well to begin with (woeful tales of war-wracked waifs being surplus to requirements).
We can see more evidence to support this in the abduction literature. In Hopkins Intruders an experiencer named Lucille struggles (while under hypnosis) to recall the image of older humanoids that appear to be a half-way point between human and alien. She sees a figure who:
…seems to have a gender . . . and is very pale . . . not gray like the others, but a paler being that seemed to be feminine . . . There also seems to be a warmth emanating from her that seems to be very special. She’s maybe even a little taller. I remember being conscious of a pointed chin and the big eyes . . . but more rounded features . . . more roundedness, some how. Very warm and delicate. And I also had the idea that. . . whoever it was…I’ll call it a she. . . was a very special being. Very ethereal, very esthetic-looking… I don’t see ears…no eyebrows.
Another abductee Ed, describes a “half and half” hybrid being that he had a sexual encounter with:
…she had ears, though he didn’t remember seeing any ears…She had a mouth. She never smiled, she never said anything…Her eyes weren’t like our eyes, either. But they weren’t like the men’s [the aliens] eyes. She had eyes like we have in the sense that we have eyeballs and pupils and the white. But the shape of them was different. They were rounder, like when your eyes are wide open.
In addition to the previously mentioned almond-shaped eyes with large dark irises that we saw in part 12, it seems necessary to list other recurring features in Margaret Keane’s young women that further support the comparison with descriptions of hybrid aliens by subjects who believe they have met these creatures during an alien abduction. Margaret Keane’s young women:
- almost never had ears
- frequently had unusual pallid or cool skin tones (greys and blues)
- often had mouths and noses that were small and faint
- often had pointed chins
- had fingers that were long, slender, and without visible fingernails
- had eyebrows and eyelashes that were minimal and sometimes not visible at all
- almost always had no facial expression
- all of them had a staring gaze directly at the viewer
We’ve seen in part 12 evidence for the argument that it is because of Keane’s artwork that we have such a vivid idea about what an alien, or more specifically an alien-human-hybrid, looks like in the first place.
To recap: To say that Margaret Keane drew what look like aliens gets it backwards. Helped on by two decades of media exposure and merchandising, her images appear to have found their way into the literature of abduction researchers through the testimony of witnesses – those under hypnosis and those in a normal waking state. The chronology of alien imagery shows that where Science Fiction mirrored early depictions of aliens that abduct humans – rendering them with large goggling eyes – the figures Margaret painted with eyes containing large dark irises, sometimes almost completely black, became the consensus opinion of how human hybrids appear. On Jacobs iterative scale of hybridization Keane’s images are just a couple of steps away from fully alien creatures.
Which raises another question.
Did Alien Abduction Research Borrow from Keane’s Images?
Note, for example, that Budd Hopkins, probably the most influential of the abduction researchers, was friends with fellow abduction researcher David Jacobs. He counselled Whitley Strieber, author of the bestselling book about his own alleged abduction experiences and he introduced John Mack to the topic in 1989.
Hopkins was also friends (and relatively close neighbours in Manhattan) with classical realist portrait artist Ted Seth Jacobs, who had worked with him on his 1981 book about abductions, Missing Time, where he gave graphic form to alleged abductee Steven Kilburn’s vision of alien beings that he recalled during hypnosis sessions.
Ted Seth Jacobs would later paint the alien portrait that would become the famous cover of Strieber’s bestselling book Communion, which was made into a film of the same name starring Christopher Walken.
Prior to his interest in UFOs and Aliens, Hopkins was himself a celebrated professional artist whose work hangs in prestigious galleries around the world. So, It seems very likely both he and Ted Seth Jacobs would have been very aware of Margaret Keane’s work.
We also need to note that three of the most well known alien abduction researchers, Hopkins, Jacobs and Mack were criticised for providing their subjects with reading materials related to the alien abduction experience prior to their therapy sessions that often involved hypnosis.
We have to wonder if any of Margaret Keane’s images were included in these materials because of examples like this illustration of a “hybrid child” presented as evidence at the Abduction Study Conference held at MIT in Massachusetts in 1992.
A caption in reads,
The woman who made this drawing of a “hybrid child” [below] that was presented to her during an abduction experience is sincere in her belief that this is the surviving member of a twin pregnancy that was taken from her uterus by aliens.
But let’s compare it to a Margaret Keane painting created decades earlier.
Comparison: Detail from The Lookout, 1967 (left)
An illustration of a hybrid child drawn by an alleged abductee in 1990 (right)
We also have to keep this in mind when noticing parallels between Margaret Keane’s images and the language used by abduction researchers. Before Steven Spielburg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977, or E.T the Extraterrestrial, 1982, and before Fuller’s Interrupted Journey, 1966 – the story of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction that included pencil sketches of the alien creatures they saw – Margaret Keane painted Three Women, 1963.
It might seem unremarkable but consider this 1963 surrealist painting and count how many points of similarity it has to today’s understanding of how grey aliens are supposed to look. In addition keep the image in mind when reading this authoritative-sounding anatomical description of aliens provided by David Jacobs in his book Secret Life, 1992:
The alien’s chest is small and narrow, with no noticeable bony structure in it. No sternum or clavicle is discernible. Abductees report no ribs protruding from under the skin. Nor is the chest bifurcated like a human’s chest. Witnesses see no breasts or nipples. The normal human triangular configuration of the shoulders leading down to the waist is not present. The overall outline of the upper and lower body is one of rectangular straightness down to the legs with no waist. The aliens do not appear to have a pelvis or prominent hip bones… the aliens arms are long and very thin, with no apparent musculature. They bend at the “elbows” and can be used the way humans use their arms…hands and fingers also resemble humans’ although they are thin and long…their two legs are short and thin…
David M. Jacobs
So, did abduction researchers and their subjects borrow from Keane’s art?
Perhaps they did more than that. The similarity between the cover for Jacobs’ influential book1 and Margaret Keane’s The First Grail, 1962 and The Runaway, 1965 is intriguing.
What we know to be true is that Margaret Keane’s career as a painter creating big-eyed portraits predates reports of alien abduction and the consensus opinion of what a typical alien or hybrid alien looks like. In the same year (1957) that Villas Boas was reporting his sexual encounter with an alien aboard a UFO in Brazil – by most accounts the opening chapter in the alien abduction story – the Keane’s were descending the staircase of an aeroplane about to hold an exhibition of their Big Eyes art.
Summary
- Abduction accounts, especially those obtained under hypnosis, appear to describe Keanes’ paintings of adolescent women in exacting detail
- There are at least eight motifs shared between Keanes’ paintings and the beings abductees describe
- Keane’s paintings predate these abduction accounts by at least a decade