Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Driveway

1997-9, oil on canvas, 66x78in.

One of the biggest paintings I've ever made, after a friend gave me this collossal set of stretcher bars he'd salvaged from his job as an art mover. I think they'd belonged to Jim Dine or somebody and he was tossing them. Anyway, I worked on this for a few years, at about the same time I was working on the smaller still life paintings. This was kind of a machine for me, a synthesis of the memory-based landscapes and the observational still lifes, and while making it I was thinking all the time of Matisse's large decorative works from the early teens or so.

The image is a scan of a slide, which doesn't always work too well, I've found.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey, bro, is that MY Caddy?!! Did you crop Caiti off of the hood?!!

Patrick Jewell said...

good eye, brother. i did indeed use a photo of yours for that. it was black and white, even. but i think it was kirby who was in the shot. i guess you've never seen this one in person. it's so big, it's tough to lug out sometimes.