Oil on panel
24″ x 16″
2009
He isn’t looking at you. He’s looking at the picture-plane, the site of the methodological drama and the working space of painting. He is obligated to the spectatorial pretense of the portrait. The “black of portraiture” takes up the rest of the frame and, with its fact-of-the-surface application (a sign-painter’s), competes for presence. However, this black is cousin to the cinematic green-screen, or like the enchanting blackness of an open barn door at midday.
In the work, an early provincial American painting sensibility prods at the theatrical and readymade characteristics intrinsic to portraiture; the painter discloses his iconoclasm.