Thaw #2

18 x 24 oil on panel

Whites of melting snow give away to green grass. The top center is a focal point, a restful blue-gray sky. The painting is similar to my abstractions done in 1998 and exhibited at Villanova University. Light lines form a frame, an artificial spatial point that takes the painting into a metaphorical realm, a platonic conception of thawing winter. Matisse did it with chairs, for example. Rather than a rendering of a chair, his depictions are the idea of chairs, re situated in artificial, fantastical rooms partially observed, partially imagined. On a grimmer note, Andy Warhol's electric chairs' repetitiveness produced via silkscreen are also about the concept of an electric chair and all the ethical questions tied to it. Presenting any picture, photograph, painting, whatever, of an electric chair comes with the baggage of the moral debate over capital punishment. Art works this way, inevitably symbolic. Portraits can be seen as emblematic of the human condition despite the specificity of a particular person in time through the eyes of a particular artist, likewise for Christian art. Rodin and Camille Claudel's figurative sculptures are great examples. Airy and cold, Thaw #2 is my experience and concept of winter.