March 2nd
Rob Womack
enamel paint on wood
34⅛” x 36” x 17½"
Obsession
Rob Womack
enamel paint on wood
34” x 24½” x 18"
A sensitive observer once said the imagery from Catherine’s paintings seemed to burst outward off of the furniture surfaces, while mine tended to recede deeply inward. Very true.
The motif of uninhabited interiors set within a dream-like imaginary metropolis is a subject that has been with me a long time. Years before I started painting furniture I explored many variations of this theme through a series of oil pastel drawings. Marrying this previously explored subject to the surfaces of furniture has produced many new avenues of possibilities.
The rendered interiors became something different from most traditional painted furniture with flat designs resting on the surface. Nor was it exactly trompe l’oeil painting (which is usually applied to walls) as the goals were not to “fool the eye” that these were actual spaces and objects. The paintings did seem to pull the viewer into the furniture. I refer to these sorts of works as “interior” pieces or “scenarios.”
While working on the interior drawings I started to include homages within the settings to the artists that I most admired. Paintings on the walls by Hopper, de Chirico, Balthus, Boutet de Monvel, or Ben Nicholson would serve as muses to the tone of the rooms and counterpoints to the vistas glimpsed through the windows.
Later, the idea of homages to artists became an element in nearly all of my works.