'City of Glass 23 - (Cleave/Stare)' 120x100cms

In the twenty third painting in the 'City of Glass'* series, the face of Stillman emerges..Below is an earlier version which I wasn't happy with- it felt like a cartoon, a drawing rather than a painting and was in front of the divide. I like the new Beckmann-esque Stillman, trapped behind the 'cleaved' shape of Manhattan, like the bars of a cage. He stares, he is menacing, obsessed - this is the man who locked up his son, in the dark for thirteen years, in a deranged experiment to find the language of God. Dense reds and greens add to feeling of claustrophobia. I have enjoyed wrestling with the figurative and abstract languages and have used the angles and triangles of Manhattan, the clothing and the face to bring coherence. The last act today was the introduction of the one circle/button of the overcoat, which, in it's perfection, softens the power of the face.  



 

earlier version

*from 'The New York Trilogy', a novel by Paul Auster