Clams 600

Comment

Comment by Kenneth Browne on July 29, 2011 at 8:12am

Thank you, I also really like this one.  Your very spot on thank you for comments.

 

Comment by Resident Curator on July 28, 2011 at 9:38am

Curator’s Comment:

 

These are amazing portraits.  I particularly like the muscular painting of Clams, showcasing an eccentrically voluptuous burlesque dancer.  Her expression is conflicted; pushing her body forward, but head slightly pulled back from the viewer.  It’s as if you’re capturing the very nature of burlesque’s push and pull.  The sexual tension resides in this goading, with the mystique vanishing in the final reveal.  While this piece employs nostalgia for the bawdy, uninhibited field of forgotten Vaudeville, the painting is masterful and controlled.  The pink fluffy shell costume is a grotesquely wonderful nod to Venus on the Clamshell, while the hard edged shadows in the taut torso and limbs are on par with Phillip Pearlstein’s similarly emotionally detached figures.  The dismal yellow-green curtain in the back is a good contrast to the warm, fleshy colors in the figure.  It took me a moment to notice the small unattended glass/candle in the lower right.  It nicely balances the visual weight of the composition, but also suggests a lonely onlooker.