On the Road
A lot of the inspiration for these paintings came from road trips my husband and I take every year driving south towards New Orleans from New England. Road signs, billboards, car logos, roadside trash - all are fair game for paintings that search for formal beauty - if not meaning - in the mundane, ordinary, and unremarkable aspects of our environment.
"Women At Work" 2017 - acrylic on square panel; 34" x 34" (diagonal measure) Private collection
"Easy St." 2017 - acrylic/panel; 5.5" x 25.5"
"Art/Life" 2017 -
acrylic/wood/steel carriage bolts; 30.875" x 42.5" The idea for this piece came from reading artist Robert Rauschenberg's remark that his aim was to work "in the gap between life and art."
"Help Wanted" 2017 acrylic/panel; 17" x 22.25" We all need a little help now and then. Private collection
"Chevy Blue" 2015 - oil/gold leaf/panel 18" x 48" Private Collection
"Fall of Man" 2015 - oil/linen 34" x 34" (on the diagonal) - I cogitated about the right image for this piece for years. Should it be one of those schematic, stick-like figures we see on warning cones on wet floors? Or perhaps a more naturalistic figure? I even drew up my own version only days before I saw the Goya retrospective this fall at the MFA Boston. Among the drawings and prints was "Crazy Skates," Goya's figure of a man on roller skates who has lost his balance and falls back. I took my notebook out and sketched him right then and there. I'd found my falling man. (And, yes, that is a banana peel he's slipped on.)
"Slow - Children" 2015 - oil/panel 24" x 18" - This painting incubated for about forty years (in my head). The little girl - do you recognize her? She's from G. de Chirico's haunting "Melancholy and Mystery of a Street," circa 1914. I don't think he'd mind.
"Art/Golf" 2014 - acrylic/metal bolts/wood 20" x 37.125"
"Moving Forward" 2014 - oil/linen 20" x 36"
"Chevy Sky" 2014 - oil/panel 18" x 48"
"Variant 1942" 2014 - oil and wax/panels (24" masonite tondo mounted on panel) 28" x 28" x 2.125" Private Collection
"Primed" 2013 - oil/linen/panel 12.125" x 12.125" -
Three stacked billboards waiting for their ad copy: I thought, "What better motif for a painting!"
Private Collection
"In Passing" 2013 - acrylic/oil/metal/panel 25.25" x 10.625"
"Waverley" 2013 - oil/panel 23.875: x 38.75" - The terra cotta-colored wall at Waverley train station in Belmont, Massachusetts, caught my attention every morning as I commuted to my "day job" at MIT for many years.
"Yoke" 2012 - oil/panel 5" x 9.5"
"Children at Play" 2010 -
oil/linen; two panels, each 14" x 14"
"Vertical Abstract" 2010 -
oil/panel 8.125" x 3.75"
"Road Sign" 2010 - oil/panel 10.1875" x 4.3125"
"Rag top" 2010 - oil/linen/panel (conjoined diptych) 8" x 10" - Yellow Jeeps with black fabric tops were everywhere that year.