Oil and Mixed Media on Panel
40X32 Inches
A woman I know well was brushing her hair in reverse from the nap of her neck forward. She was cantilevered in such a way to allow her hair fall freely untangled. Her long beautiful back possessed an accentuated and sturdy spine allowing a graceful arc to be possible. The knurls and irregularities in ones spine may not be thought of as conventionally beautiful. Within my aesthetic the skeletal understructure implies Dynamism. Moonlight softly illuminating the viscera, the time of day suggests privacy and solitude. The picture locates her at a waterfall; I suppose I yearn for a time when the stream was not only a place to go for self maintenance but a place to see reflected ones soul. My love’s hair was auburn at the time so in I felt justified pushing the muse’s hair all the way to red,. Once introduced I had to bounce the red quietly through the picture, even at midnight. All the surfaces in the picture have three-dimensionality; the water falling vertically from the falls is thickly grooved and her body is contoured with palette knife in modeling paste creating a modest texture throughout until one discovers the stone upon which she sits is virtually real. A tromploiel surface painted upon sculpted hard foam. Something like a stage set boulder. The paintings mood and subject a touch prosaic, beg the romantic sensibility from the viewer. This in contrast to the discovery that the boulder protrudes unexpectedly 3 inches off the surface. Ive watched onlookers do a double take- at first not sure if it is protruding out or illustrated as such. The cracks and crevices are painted in detail and then ;”is it a real boulder ?”.Touching informs a counterfeit; an artistic illusion. For me in that moment of perceptual confusion, a traditional ‘old fashion’ painting subject induces a post-modern quirk.