Poet Laynie Browne just gave a talk at the Poet’s House in NYC on the subject of “The Poet’s Novel” and asked me to make some images to illustrate her lecture. This is a excerpts of the twenty-something images I made for it. A little unhinged perhaps, but one can dream. Must, rather, dream. I’m sure it made for a curious Powerpoint presentation.
Archives for November 2014
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Carte de Visite #5 (Horned Owl)
30″ x 40″
I’m delighted that the New York Public Library put up a post on their Tumblr about my “Carte de Visite” paintings. Here is THE LINK a few thoughts about the ongoing series. Did you know Daguerre also invented the diorama? News to me. There’s a guy to have lunch with when the time machine comes together.
The uniformity of the carte de visite photos is intriguing to me. Often one figure is surrounded by studio props – rocks, birds hanging from the ceiling – in front of a painted backdrop of a landscape. It can actually be hard to tell where the room ends, and what is real, like one of those great dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. Dioramas were also invented by Daguerre, so there’s that connection to photography as well. There is the sense that the subject is enclosed in a glass case. It has been fabulous to have access to the NYPL archive, to study images in detail, including the marginalia, and occasional edits by the photographer. As a painter, I find those fugitive marks captivating.
Related Images:
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Moose and Businessman
Carte de Visite #4
30″ x 40″
A continuation of a loosey goosey study of cartes de visite at the New York Public Library and the history of first communion photographs. In this one, the sitter (or stander) is visited by lavender orbs and a playful flower arrangement. Tucked in the lower right a very tenuous canvas of this painting, a print of which was a fixture in my grandparents’ dining room.