Dog, Boat, Girl & Others Tales

This latest body of work began with the vision of a chair, just a simple chair cast in shadows and floating against a black background. My hope was to suggest a mood, to make the chair speak, to tell a story – not any specific story but a nebulous tale that might shift with the light of the day or with the perspective of those who viewed it.

The ambiguous narrative has always played a significant role in my work. One might find a story in the posture of a figure or in the ambivalent expression of a face but an artists’ palette also colours how we feel, where we look, what we see.

In blacks, whites and greys, with a variety of muted tones, these recent paintings evolved from the chair to the boat, to the dog, while other tales unfolded in the laps of glamour girls with bouquets of white roses. Girls with lambs and others with boxing gloves … some themes are familiar, some are new, but as stories go they are as simple as any fleeting moment –true and false, close and distant, here and gone.

JT Winik