Title: Dorothy Parker
Material: Oil on wood
Size: 40×30
Year: 2014 SOLD
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye. – Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker could hold her own and more at the Algonquin Roundtable, where she drank gin with the likes of (and dislikes of) Alexander Woollcott, the Marx Brothers, George S. Kauffman and Shirley Temple, who usually ordered a Shirley Temple. This painting has the viewer wondering if Dorothy approves or disapproves of you. Does it matter? Say no. It is better to be talked about than not be talked about.
I use basic shapes, mechanical movement and naturally derived decoration to suggest Art Deco of the 1920’s and the unfortunate simplicity of an early New Yorker magazine cover.
This painting is the first in which I change my story halfway through the scene and become inconsistent with the colors in my deliberate negligence. What’s the viewer going to do about it anyway? You’re a bunch of chimps. You love bright colors, and the more the better. The bigger picture is, if a senator can ignore science, why can’t I? To me the truth is a path and not a destination, so I see nothing wrong with interrupting the predictability of a painting when it contributes to the greater good of humankind.