Beautiful & Intriguing Work!
 

All I can say that it works really well. Composition, color, content and craftsmanship is of superb quality. What a joy to discover 'real' art that id deeply enriching and inspiring to the viewer.

Thanks folks.

Lots of comments about the yellow mask. Well, there is plenty of yellow in the picture. I think it's best to keep the high tone centered on the mask. I think of the three primary colors anchored on the mask, the tea pot, and Pinocchio's coat and hat.

Glad this seems to be working. It was very... involved!

Rick

Because of a certain type of traditional doll being banned over here on grounds of political incorrectness, my eye was drawn to the positioning of your dolls and all I can't help seeing the white doll smiling alongside his triumphant bugles while at his feet, with an expression of disbelief, lies...

And a fallen war-painted mask... A globe... A teapot...?

I am sorry. I am not a "visual" person. If I look at a picture I can't actually "see" anything until I have told myself what I am looking at. This is almost instantaneous but a part of my perception process. I hadn't noticed the colours particularly, they were part of this deceptively haphazard arrangement, the evidence of an artists eye for making a whole canvas sing, as this does. It sings to me anyway.

I also had a flickering memory of the marionette, Petrushka, brought down the Moor, and seeing him "dead"... The puppet-master lifts him aloft to show the audience - "Look - it's just a puppet!"

And these are just puppets, too, are they not? Oh, oh - Amerigo.

Please forgive me, Rick, if I have hurt your picture.

You haven't hurt it at all, Ann!

You're the first to step up to the issue of the black and white dolls and their positioning and what it means. I'm not going to give a narrative guide, but I like where you are going with it and that you are not absolutely sure where it goes!

Dolls like the outrageous one on the keyboard are hard to come by here as well. I bought this one about 30 years ago at a curbside garage sale in Maine. The guy who sold it to me said, and I will never forget, "that ain't no Woolsworth doll."

I've always feared painting the black doll. But I put him into the still life that I was building with no narrative intent, using stuff from my still life cabinet. The narrative began.

Well, a few notes... Yes, it's called Amerigo. There is a German beer bottle, and an English tea pot. A painted war mask in defeat or deflation. The globe is turned to North America.

I am a visual person. So I avoid putting together too detailed a description of what I'm painting or looking at, because that prescribes an experience, rationalizing things in and out of the frame. So, I don't see this as having any one story. What I like is what seems to be a kind of shock of uneasiness that you had when you confronted it, which caused you to investigate the meaning.

I'm glad that the "whole canvas" is singing. It's a complex harmony--I tried bringing all the items together using color.

Thanks,
Rick