What Origin the Words? Painting

The first painting of the Ascension Series. The series is characterized by compositional elements—mostly rendered in grisaille—that float on backgrounds of saturated solid color. As usual in the artist's work, the furniture components represent people. The ribbon was inspired by the medieval speech bubbles in the form of streamers in gothic art. The work was inspired by the challenge of discerning the true meaning underneath spoken communication. On the ribbon are the words, “of course, bien sûr, I promise, nope no, don’t let the—get you down,” and some gibberish thrown in for good measure. Both the reliability of words and gravity is suspended. The falcon overhead, more prominent in the beginning stages of the work, has been overpainted. The thick handmade paper from India allows for numerous heavy layers of pigment that result in intense color. The midnight blue antique silk velvet, applied to most of the letters, swallows light in a manner not possible with pigments and provides a vacuum like visual void. The center of the book matched E is cut out and backed with iridescent apricot colored silk.