Visual Parallels

Books with Playing Cards, Money and Postcard

24" x 36"

I wanted to create interesting counterpoints to the solid structure of the two stacks of books.  I interspersed playing cards, money (an old Canadian one dollar bill), sheet music and a postcard of the boulevards of Paris.  The coins are left over from a trip to England and the 1000 lira bill depicting Galileo is from our honeymoon to Italy in 1993.

I was thinking of historical paintings like this one by de Heem.  Or, this one.  As well, a contemporary artist who has done some excellent book paintings is Guillermo Munoz Vera.

My painting also references the tromp l'oiel tradition of still life.  I've attempted to make the torn and crumpled cards appear to protrude from the surface.  I've always admired the letter rack paintings popular in the 17th century such as those by Edward Collier.

Each of the red books is a slightly different colour and it was interesting to define those.  The softer or more rust coloured ones were painted with burnt siena, cadmium red medium and burnt umber.  The brightest red book on the left side was painted with cadmium red light, yellow ochre and a little bit of white.  I like how the diamond on the ace rhymed with the bright spot on the red book.  These kind of visual parallels are what keeps me interested in a composition.  The queen of hearts juxtaposed with the queen on the old one dollar bill is also something that was interesting to paint.  It was a challenge to capture both the graphic quality on the playing card, and then also the quality of the engraving on a bill.

Detail

I felt very strongly when I was painting this image that there were layers of memory embedded in the stacks of books as I looked closely at the postcard, sheet music, the old money and playing cards.  The shadows that the objects created were meaningful because of what they hid, and also illuminated.  The shadows almost become objects themselves, part of the sediment.

The titles of most of the books are obscured because I've chosen to make the books more important as objects rather than emphasize their exact contents.  However, it might be interesting to know that some of the books are by Victor Hugo, Henry Fielding and Zane Grey.  One of the books is a Norwegian - English dictionary.  (My grandmother was Norwegian).  And yet another is a book of poems by Robert Southey.