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"'B' is for Butterfly"
5 x 5"
Acrylic on Board, 2009
Still Life with Butterfly
$500
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This tiny still life is one of four "alphabet" paintings and part of a larger series that has preoccupied me off and on for years. They represent my modernist re-envisioning of the trompe le’oeil still life. I’ve always been fascinated with trompe le ‘oeil work and the paradox it presents. A two dimensional surface is used to create the illusion of space, and a shallow depth of field is often used to enhance the effect (such as in William Harnett’s after the hunt series, depicting guns, horns, and dead animals hanging on a door or wall). The irony is that part of what makes the illusion so realistic is the love of surface, say the wood grain of a door, the texture of bulletin board or letter rack, etc... Given that the basic distinction between most abstract work and illusionistic work is the acknowledgement of the canvas as a flat surface to be decorated, rather than a window to a real space, I became fascinated with the idea of letting the "backdrop" of the painting be an abstract painting, all texture and color, but using it as a surface on which to rest tromp le ‘oeil objects, thus lending to the abstraction the quality of a realistic surface in three dimensional space. The use of the typeface further asserts the flatness of the surface.
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