Tents

In the Fall of 2019 I started painting tents as an exercise in oil glazing, repeating a simple design to disregard subject and focus solely on surface and application. As the collection grew, however, it became clear that tents sit firmly on a spectrum of ideas I’d been exploring for a decade: structure, shelter, construction, housing, etc.

In December I became captivated by an image of a Bulgarian nomad with his captive ‘dancing’ bear. I love John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire which contains two performative bears- one real, the other in a bear suit.
So, I painted the bear.
It almost included a zipper near her butt in a nod to Irving’s ‘smart bear.’ My percipient colleague Lane Cooper recognized the painting for what it was becoming: both an ode to Manet’s The Fifer and a depiction of my own pathos.

Lane graciously put both the bear and a handful of tents into a show at River House Arts, which by now had become a joke to folks where I teach about the obvious connection of camping and bears. As a riff on the Boy’s Life magazines that were a staple of scouting culture, Lane named the grouping of work This Boy’s Life.

Most of the tents failed, which meant the project was a success.