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Charles the Great1994 Oil on canvas 68.0" x 84.0" Private collection I've long been fascinated with the graphics in old posters. The poster in the background of this piece advertised "Carter the Great", a stage magician whose traveling show was quite the rage in the 30's and 40's. This particular poster belongs to my former landlords and long-time friends, Mort and Virginia. Talk about collectors. Oh, my! Their home makes me green with envy. Fortunately, they will loan me things for short periods of time. What a wonderful variety of "stuff" they have. All the items in this painting came from them. There weren't any numbers to personalize in this set-up, so I figured "artistic license" coupled with a big thank you to my husband, without whom I could not function, and changed Carter to Charles. I was quite happy to find out a year or so later that Carter the Great was, in real life, Charles Carter. I didn't consciously plan it, but as I worked along, I realized that I had included both political parties: the GOP as the elephant bank, the Democrats as the worker with his donkey. I came to think of the bird in the lower right as the "storyteller" of the piece. There's hocus-pocus, cowboys, a performing monkey. Perhaps the riders on the ferris wheel are aspiring to the Imperial Class at the top of the wheel? But wait, there's a little bug at the lower left, eating away at the foundation of it all! Of course, it's really about colors, shapes, surfaces. Or is it? |