Painting as Microcosm

Upon first seeing House, Frankfurt an der Oder [above], my mother remarked that it made her think of our trip to Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West and all of the stories that either took place or were written (or both) there, that it was an image at once simple and complex. Of course, the design itself was taken from a sketch I made while visiting friends in Frankfurt, but I thought that this was still a fitting reaction-- a house is a sort of world within a world, full of stories, routines, and events hidden yet recognizable to any outsider, as is any objet d'art, and the idea of "microcosms" and predictable patterns in both the smallest molecules and the largest galaxies were on my mind as I was painting.
The canvas [above] is fairly large and boldly colored, yet the work is full of extremely subtle details, whether in the textured chaos-into-order of the background or the interconnecting structure of the design itself. It is, on one hand, a depiction of an earthly home, and on the other hand a trip into the cosmos which is the greater home to us all.

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