A Seat at the Table: New Painting with an Imagined Art Collection

Turning to revisions on older paintings, I have made something of this painting of Scot from about ten years ago. The painting was created from an original drawing I did as Scot posed in an old red wooden chair and holding a rock.

To update the painting, I changed the rock into red blocks and incorporated art work from my colleagues, Lee Malerich and Janet Orselli. The rocks that originally rested on the shelf behind Scot were transformed into brightly colored Orselli sculptures. The sculptures that I chose were Orselli’s Ladybug and The Doc is In. I chose them mostly to complete a red, blue and yellow color triad in the center of the painting, but they also add content as well. Although not visible in the painting, The Doc is In sports a small blue colored pawn from a collection of chess pieces.

 The oversize and overwhelming head on the makeshift blue couch serves to underscore the feeling of manipulation.

In order to use Ladybug, I had to turn the piece in my imagination so it would rest at the right angle on the shelf in the painting. Fortunately the painting is so small (9" x 9") any awkwardness in my having done this is mostly forgiven by scale.

The sculptural work on the floor of the painting has been influenced by Lee Malerich’s Build Your Wall, an essentially deconstructed chair. In this sense my new art work, has become an ekphrastic work - paying homage to the art of other artists. Perhaps there will be more of these ahead.