collaboration with my father

In these artworks, I started with the only paintings made by my father circa 1958. He died in 1960 when I was very young. I have no memory of him. These paintings, which he made as a hobbyist, were found in the house where I grew up. I decided to paint images directly on top of the paintings to initiate collaboration posthumously with my father. In doing so, I have created the convergence of two artistic perspectives; that of my fathers’ overlaid by my own. I have no special fondness for these particular pictures or the way in which they were executed, but I do have a direct interest in their origin and personal meaning. I chose to paint directly onto his canvases thereby pre-empting any future reuse of his images. They have a sense of permanence this way. I did not want to approach this idea with digital technology and leave room open to make innumerable alterations. I want to keep the substance and content of these pictures simple and direct.

Painting over his pictures creates a conversation with my past from which I have created a new memento of my father’s former presence. In this context the “before” photograph now becomes a memory of him. In the process of working on top of Falling Water, I created a three-dimensional grid, which serves as a framing device and a contemporary entry into the image of the waterfall. The waterfall represents the passage of time and the persistence of turbulence.

In Dining Room Objects, I painted one flower in the vase, a large pair of scissors, a shadow made by the candlestick holder and a flame on the candle. I chose ephemeral images and a painting technique to add a more compelling sense of fragility. This contrasts my father’s pedestrian technique and the intrinsic permanence of the domestic objects he chose.

The Tow is the most personal and psychological interpretation of my collaboration with my Dad. I painted out the sails of the ship and painted in a tugboat. The tugboat pulling the disabled war ship suggests triumph, loss, departure, or arrival as well as interdependence. The tug I painted is an image appropriated from a J.M.W. Turner painting: “The Fighting Temeraire” (1839). In Turner’s time this tugboat symbolized a new generation of technology retiring a hero being put to rest. The ship and tug in my collaborative painting become a metaphor for distinguishing between the old and the new, the brave and the innocent, the dead and the living.