The Matriarch of Between
Oil and House Paint on Oak Veneer
20”x 36”
2005

The matriarch of between is the first in what is to be a series of paintings using dream like images from my own personal vocabulary to define a non-linear narrative throughout the works. In this first piece we are introduced to the Matriarch of the city of Between. The city is unique in that it is neither real nor imaginary, and as a result of such is capable of offering an appropriate home to the fantastic and the absurd. The Matriarch is protector/tormentor of this city and its inhabitants. She is rarely seen in any form resembling human and often works as/through an albino raven she has seen to take as her familiar and even then this sign usually goes unnoticed. To the inhabitants of Between she is a feeling without a name. She is the sense of something larger than ones self.

The work is not simply the introduction of a character. That is only the surface of the work. As the viewer begins to translate the work into images, and then images into symbols, and even then symbols into “meaning”, there is in fact another facet to the works function. If attention is paid to the veneer background, the viewer will notice that the veneer pieces mesh as if it was still one solid sheet of veneer painted with a stripe pattern. If the viewer maintains this understanding of the process of veneer application, s/he will notice that at the point in the work where the veneer jogs to the right is still in keeping with this pattern. In other words, if the veneer were not jogged to the right the veneers would indeed all match up like a puzzle of a sheet of veneer. But since this is indeed the case, the extra material seen on the left must have been part of the original sheet of veneer as well. Which means that the whole background was intentionally constructed for this effect. The purpose of such elaborate work with details serves to bring the viewer into the mindset that was just mentioned as necessary for the discovery the aforementioned elaborate work. The background serves to bring the viewer and the creator into communication. The viewer realizes the intention of the work and the creator puts these aspects into the work so that the viewer begins to think along the same lines as the creator. This is not dissimilar to the works of Jackson Pollock. We as viewers understand how the work was made, and by doing so come to understand the act of creation as a demystified process.