Stormy Monday, oil on canvas, 42″ x 26″.
Stormy Monday is a medium size oil painting on canvas. Three primary colors red, blue, and green create the color composition. The white is made up of many colors, whites, greys, tans, and blues and greens. This is an imaginary suburban scene populated by couples. There is the couple splashing in the water, the couple kissing in the shadows in the lower left, and the couple holding hands coming down the church steps. The father in the lower center is pushing a baby stroller.
This painting is about the continuity of life in the suburbs of America. The couples are flirting, kissing, and married. The houses are idealized, more symbolic than real, like Monopoly houses, like pieces on a game board. The people seem more real than the world they inhabit. The threatening clouds cascade into the foreground. The cloud fingers are almost like knives and seem to threaten the placid scene below. Churches are an important part of life here. Sometimes I hear singing coming from churches I pass on my morning run.
Here in America our houses are all so similar. But if I painted them more distinctly, would we concentrate on the houses rather than the threat? We always seem to be sizing up each other’s houses. This painting has received a strong positive response. Yet, I sort of hated it while I was painting it. On the other hand, there are paintings I’ve created, that I really liked, that get yawns.