Oil on Canvas over Sculpted Foam
72x90 Inches
My fascination with costumes is not new, it goes back my childhood drawing army uniforms, clown suites and baseball players .The samurai is a short leap from GI Joe, who was evident in comic-book shops I escaped to, I looked at the pictures seldom read the captions. The leap in this painting may have been planted in my mind when "Chiyo" jumped from the rooftop while attempting to escape the geisha quarters in the novel "Memoirs of a Geisha". Movement in art is fundamental to figure drawing, I first encountered it as a student at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Moving beyond the picture frame, beyond the confines of your room, life, beyond your frame of mind. The figure is a transcendental symbol. The lines of movement create an opportunity to initiate abstract form around the figure. The pose itself was inspired by Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. The fatal {filal} child intends to recapture her father's lost pride by inflicting her own death. The combination of brushed aluminum surface juxtaposed with the highly textured oil painting is reminiscent of my constructions and combine paintings of the 1970s.