The painter confronts a panel on his wall (easel). Not knowing  where to begin, he paints and scrapes. Ideas are in flux. Anxious and moving in the studio between his palette and the wall, the space is alive. Look to the palette for color, paint, and a tool- either brush, knife, roller or rag. Paint walls, a floor, and objects so that the space evolves. Are you there yet?

Its's not right. Change directions and wrestle with the image to find its place in the mind's eye. The wall-easel, made of wood, has a panel on it. From across the room, he views it and ponders other options. The table-palette is in front of him but he paints it into the scene as if it were a luggage cart loading on a quai. New choices and revision delineate his timetable in this journey.

Does he add himself to the view? Standing before the wall and this imagined world, he's dead-on, dead center, and the thought demands a solution.
 
Cat's Away 2002
pencil, acrylic, alkyd, oil on wood
67 x 84 inches
The George Elliston Poetry Foundation Collection
University of Cincinnati
 He moves a solitary easel toward the wall. Its wood is worn and paint-crusted. By shifting its position to a slight diagonal the short arms point towards the window.The easel is center stage and a suitable understudy. It seems right. 

Now you have it, the play and the painter. The illusion is flat, disjointed and mercurial. Step back and forth, up and down, left or right. It's finished yet incomplete, transparent and opaque, stable and shifting. Parse the issues, what's real (?) or an illusion, measure the objects by their color, light and shadow. Everything is in its own place and time.   
  
These objects animate what is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So go back in time ... go forward. Relax, let it go, it's only a picture. Feel happy you are here because the mind's your meter and it's running. 
  return to catalogue