Tea at Sea (Stack Narrative), oil/canvas, 12" x 16" departs from the dreamy meditations of Teacup and Two Balls to flirt more openly with surrealism. In Tea at Sea I explore imagination as it relates to play. Although Stella is still learning about "make believe," fantastical accounts of the lives of her toys are not far away. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if some day soon she told me her own story about a teacup adrift in an ocean of blocks.
After creating many landscape and still life paintings over the years, I find the intersection of the genres interesting - a still life that resembles a landscape and vice versa. The use of a horizontal line near the top of the canvas conveys space, whether it indicates another object such as a table or rug or else a larger surface such as a field or desert, or, as in Tea at Sea, a mythical horizon. The extra foreground on the canvas encourages imagination and free association. I love the quirky anthropomorphic quality that objects can acquire in the right setting.
