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"Montrose Avenue" 2025 24" x 47" (60 cm x 120 cm) |
I had been painting groups of figures: families, spirits, perhaps ghosts or memories and vestiges of those who lived before or are all around us. I layer paint and figures of all sizes. Let them overlap!
I reached into my painting past and added in tables. I had flashbacks of twilight dinners under a grapevine trellis or being sheltered by apple trees during those late, hot hours of a summer sun. Other tales and stories gather 'round. I build my world as it wants to be.
For the above painting, "Montrose Avenue", I was drawn to childhood recollections of the street where my elementary school was situated. "Riverside", a honey-baked gold brick building set upon a gentle slope, was tucked away in a neighborhood off a main road. The street was flanked by two large bricked columns, an entrance to the neighborhood and to the school.
My first-ever best friend in first grade was Agnes. She lived on the corner of Montrose and Warren. Their house seemed enormous to me with multiple entrances, milk chutes and uneven levels. They were a family of Hungarian immigrants. So then, the "embroidery-lace" of this tablecloth is inspired by Hungarian folkcraft.
(all paintings are oil on canvas)
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"Tonight is their Night" 50" x 56" (127 cm x 142 cm) |
With "Legacy" and "First Lineage", I think about ancestry, forgotten voices and our connections to them.
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"Legacy" 2025 56" x 32" (142 cm x 81 cm) |
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"Second Lineage" 2025 56" x 32" (142 cm x 81 cm) |
People who know me, know that I don't like painting on square canvases. At all. But, I had this canvas. It was floating around the studio forever, layered with about 10 paintings, including words of poems and all sorts of gunk.
After multiple sandings, I was determined to do something with it.
Because of the crusted surface, and the inability to move paint more freely, I like the feeling it has, like a mural or fresco... chalked and slathered on a wall of over-worn stone.
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"The Dreams of Others" 2025 36" x 36" (91 cm x 91 cm) |
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detail, "The Dreams of Others" |
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"The Long Way Back" 2025 50" x 56" (127 cm x 142 cm) |
