Over the House and Home Together

both 12" x 9" oil on panel

Over the House is inspired by the current housing crisis in the U.S. A stormy tree hangs over a diminished house like a black cloud, compressing it as do the flanking trees. A blue sky and reflecting sunlight provide sanctity.

Home Together depicts two houses side-by-side, quietly radiating their own colors, touching like people cuddling on a couch. It is about sharing a journey (a road), a relationship, a home together while retaining individuality.

Rembrandt had his own financial crisis. He is made more real to us when we learn he had creditors after him* and he subsequently tried to sign as much of his wealth as possible over to his son, Titus, before it was seized. Rembrandt's experiences correlate with today's short sales and foreclosures. All his property was sold and his house went on the auction block. A shoemaker and a silk seller bought it, dividing it in half by knocking down the gallery Rembrandt built. This happened in 1658, the same year he painted his weighty and so human self-portrait in the Frick Collection.* Go see it and the exhibition “Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections” , on view through May 15, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, (212) 288-0700, frick.org.

*Holland Cotter NY Times , 2009 Rembrandt article.

**Information gathered from Rembrandt's Eyes, by Simon Schama.