figurative work
and portraits
The black and white portraits and landscapes below were all done with charcoal on paper. (Maine Coast 1 also employed a bit of acrylic paint and colored pencil to add a touch of color.) These are much more straightforward than the figurative painting and installation piece that follows the charcoals.
Although it is hard to tell from a web site, all of my figurative painting begins with a canvas carefully prepared with layers of satin applied and covered with acrylic gel medium. The satin material adds lines and spots and wrinkles that one has to work with and through in building a figure. In the end these lines are visible at first but quickly become invisible, just as imperfections in people are often apparent at first, but then recede or vanish as one gets to know that individual. The use of fabric in this figurative work also relates to my interest in texture and links these pieces to my abstract paintings. A few selections follow the charcoals.
To see a larger version of the images below, click on them.
14 x 11.5"
14 x 10.5"
16 x 12"
20 x 27.5"
18 x 24"
21 3/4 x 16 1/4"
Hung Out to Dry
This installation grew out of a scene in a novel by Michael Ondatje called "In the Skin of a Lion". The scene dealt with immigrants who worked in a tannery dying leather in the early 1900’s in Ontario, Canada. The skin dyers would take hides fresh from the slaughterhouse and bring them to cisterns in the ground filled with dyes. They then beat the dye into the skins. When they finished, the skin dyers emerged from the vats covered in dye up to their necks. While the dye could be washed away, the smell never left them, and the chemicals they were exposed to lead to illness and early death.
48 x 46"
44 x 54"
