2002
oil on canvas 36” x 30”
$2500 + GST

This work owes its influence, in part, to the painting “Back View of Venus” by Jules Pascin (1924-25). I like the fleshy, rough, female backside, clearly erotic, but not romanticized. This red chair is one of my favourites and as equally sensuous as the nude. I put the painting away for several years, not knowing how to finish it. I have long admired Matisse’s “The Red Studio” (1911) that I saw in the early 1990s. It shows the inside of his thoughts - a flat surface that feels like a room. Matisse owned and was probably influenced by an earlier painting by Degas, “Combing the Hair” (1896), where shades of red dominate the composition of two women in an ambiguous room. I decided to place my nude and chair in a red room without walls.