Tuesday, June 9, 2020

"7 pm with Hopper and Bonnard" (If Edward Hopper's Model had lived during the Pandemic and had Pets")

2020 has been a very strange and disorienting year so far with lots of new phrases and expressions being added to our lives. One of these is the concept of "Staying Home" in order to "flatten the curve" and slow the spread of the COVID 19 virus. Besides sometimes being challenging- staying home had some silver linings mainly because people slowed down and had time to try things and do things they didn't have time for in their normal full and busy lives. Many people were sheltering alone which reminded me of the Edward Hopper paintings of single figures isolated in a room. Other people saw this relationship and many Hopper paintings were shared on social media. 

One of the last little trips I made before the pandemic hit, was a road trip with two friends to see the Hopper Hotel show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. I have always been a Hopper devotee. My uncle, an art historian and painter, was a lecturer on Hopper at Washington University in St. Louis, and since I learned to paint from him, I looked at a lot of Hopper paintings over many years. I even named one of our dogs after him... The show in Richmond was fantastic and I fell in love all over again with the painting "11 am" which I have depicted on the left hand wall in this painting.  I also stole  the wonderful figure from Hopper, reversed her pose and made her the woman isolating alone in "Staying Home".

"Staying Home" oil on linen 36" x 36"

But she is not alone at all. Another silver lining to the pandemic was that many people realized that it was the perfect time to bring a dog or cat into their lives. Pets are companionship and comfort and that is what we all needed. A record number of animals were pulled from shelters and placed into loving forever homes. So the woman in this painting is surrounded by her dogs and cats in the warmth of a cozy interior. The other painting on the wall is Bonnard's "Woman with Dog" -another favorite painting of mine. 

Other activities that people were doing while staying home are represented in the painting; such as learning chess, (I think the cat is winning), making sourdough bread, and doing hours of handicrafts such as knitting and needlepoint. My daughter was staying home in Brooklyn. She described her experience being in the city and sometimes called us to let us hear the nightly 7 pm ritual of people coming to their windows, shouting and beating on pots to thank the healthcare workers for their hard work, devotion and personal sacrifice. So that is what is going on in the buildings outside. 
I titled the painting "7 pm with Hopper and Bonnard" to echo the Hopper painting titled "11 am".

"Sanctuary" oil on linen 36" x 48"


I was working on this painting at the beginning of the Pandemic so I titled it "Sanctuary". The room is a place of calm and reverie, isolated from the chaos and stress of the outside world. 

Formally the painting is a play on the Matisse painting “The Piano Lesson” which is on the wall. The real painting hangs at MOMA and I visit it whenever I am there. It is a mystifying work of art. 

In "Sanctuary" the boy at the piano is the reverse image of the boy in the Matisse. Other elements I have pulled into this painting are the arabesques of the wrought iron balcony, the angles, horizontals and verticals which are either opposing or aligning with those in "The Piano Lesson". The colors also relate to Matisse’s palette. The owls have found the sanctuary to their liking and the head of the boy in "The Piano Lesson" has always looked quite owl-like to me.