Snake in the Grass

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on June 16, 2023 at 11:38am

 

Curator’s Comments:

It’s funny that Snake in the Grass is not at all threatening or deceiving, as the title's expression suggests, but describes the subject literally.  The disarming expression of the snake, if we want to anthropomorphize, may be because of the large red eye fixed on the viewer.  Posted decades ago, I’ve paused to look at this image multiple times over the years, and still don’t have a strong sense of how it connects to your larger body of work, which I have also admired.  The positivity of the snake, often treated with cultural distain, may actually be aligned with the warmth of your other figurative and landscape paintings. With longer viewing I think the animal appears rather small proportionally, and her coiling around her eggs amidst the brushy grass exudes a certain vulnerability.  The two round eggs become secondary focal points compositionally- mirroring her large round visible eye.  And so there an abstraction to the piece, in the cropping of the forms, and flatness in the patterning of the snake’s expected cylindrical body.  The grass interrupts the many floating segments.  Today is the first time I’ve looked for dimensions of the painting, and was surprised top see it listed as a 48 square canvas.  Assuming the numerals are designating inches, it may be a more formidable subject after all.