Stuart Purves and Michael Snape
The Dealer and The Artist
You can only leave stuff out once the weight of excess has left you bruised and confused. I came at this work relishing the prospect of finishing the work as soon as possible after beginning it. I had established that the first impulses tended to be the strongest and any ongoing presence with the work would serve as subtractive rather than additive.
To that end I decided to make a snapshot of a selfie. If it is possible to make a more of an already irreducible reduction then this was it.
Essentially the portrait is the pink shadow of the mobile flanked by the blue eyes. The more usual skull or full face as frame was therefore not applicable.
With Mitch's encouragement to leave it, it stood at the end of the living room, inverted,to stare at me.
Subsequently I painted Stuart Purves.
And made adjustments in relation to it and also to my self-portrait.
When the two were placed side by side, they were eerily compatible, with the ambiguity of the self portrait aided by the kind assistance of Stuart Purves.
Stuart Purves and Michael Snape. The Dealer and The Artist, 2014
While there are two panels, there appear to be three blue eyes.