The Last Aristocrat

About the Item: (Very difficult to photograph inside the case with glass front, so we took one outside the case. A video is included that we hope helps, thought it suffers from reflections on the glass. Colors shifted a bit; blue on left is a bit more turquoise, red is more subtle; much better in person.)

Artist's Statement: "Around 30 years ago, not long after I had started painting seriously, I was at a one-man exhibition of the great Brice Marden at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art when I visited the annex to get a cocktail. There was one other guy at the small bar table in an otherwise empty room, waiting for his coffee to be handed to him. He turned and dumped half of it down my front. I immediately recognized him as none other than Brice Marden. He apologized profusely, but I stopped him and said: "No problem: how often is it that Brice Marden dumps coffee on your pants? They're worth more now." We both had a good laugh. At any rate - I was certainly channeling his early work when I began work on this series. They are made with oil and beeswax on wood panels. While they look Minimalist at first glance, there are subtle shifts in color and texture that distinguish them from hard-edged abstraction. For me, it has always been about the surface, and the materials. Wax has a character unlike anything else. I use wax both hot (encaustic) and in a cold mixture with turpentine, blended with oil. I have framed these in dimensional black boxes, slightly raised from the backing, to emphasize their presence as objects, rather than paintings "of" something, and to give them a presence almost like a relic, or icon, or memento. They have a certain quiet dignity to them."

Again, apologies for the reflections in the glass; also included are photos with the glass front removed, and a video. Measures 25" x 19" with frame.