School Lunch 102

Comment

Comment by Lisa DeLoria WEinblatt on May 21, 2015 at 3:18pm

I appreciate your comments about SCHOOL LUNCH 10.  Your description of experiencing the image of SL10 realizes the connection of the viewer to the event.  There is always an important social aspect when I'm drawing on location, as I did in capturing the central figures in real time. 

I was a 'visiting artist' on a NYC public art grant - ABACA & NYFA, at an alternative High School in lower Manhattan.  Here the students, as you noted, were young adults, up to 22 years old and given another chance to experience High School.

Yes, each student is a specific individual, that I drew and use the 'likeness' for my painting, back in the studio.  Every student was given a Xerox copy of my drawing of them at the end of the school day.   

The tension of interpersonal reactions is a quality I continually seek to express.

Thank you.

Comment by Resident Curator on May 21, 2015 at 2:35pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

When I first came across this figure painting on the site, I didn’t initially associate it with your larger body of work, which I admired some time ago for the specifically male/female narrative and historical appropriation.  School Lunch (102) is superficially divergent in its subject and construction, but it shares some of the same emotional strain among the multiple figures in the space.  I quite enjoy the organic abstractions and contours in the contrasting colored clothing, and the extreme compression of the visual weight in the left half of the picture plane.  While the young women twist backwards slightly towards the viewer, they actually don’t connect with the viewer, or to each other.  The action taking place in the piece that calls their attention appears to take place outside of the frame of the picture. This lends a very interesting vantage point and mood to the scene; inviting the viewer to become an unassuming participant.  There is also some ambiguity as to their physical age.  The title, and what looks to be a pale green backpack, suggests school aged teenagers.  But the figure in the middle could be considerably older.  They don’t strike me as archetypal, but as specific individuals. Arrested in what appears to be a turn in events, the painting offers a very creative composition for building, and keeping psychological tension.