You are right. I entirely agree.

RS is using chalk and I asssume a gentle fixitive.

If you make it up to SF, ask Stephen to take you back to look at Saunder’s drawings on paper.

I do not think of all that he includes as clues (I never feel that he is trying to be elusive, that he knows more and is holding back)…

I think of visual clues not as elusiveness or pieces of deliberate mystery, but as sort of a visual shorthand, or things we see that suggest certain relationships. If we see two images of cows on the same page and one is much smaller than the other, it’s a visual clue that the larger cow is probably closer to us. Other spatial clues include nearness to the bottom of the page, contrast w/ the background, occlusion, etc.

Saunders’ work combines imagery that is defined by different means: illusionistic rendering, sillhouette, line drawing, and attached objects. In a sense we could say they have different levels of reality, and yet they are arranged in a way that suggests they are interacting. There is one painting on the Wirtz site of a woman, drawn in profile, holding drawn stems of flowers ending in painted petals. In the lower left of the panel, flowerlike shapes are freefloating, in impasto. Across the upper part of the panel is a horizontal line (near wall, distant horizon?). The whole thing takes place on a blackboard-like surface. So some visual clues are implying spatial depth, and others are reminding us that we are looking at a flat surface. It’s not like traditional Renaissance view-through-a-window illusionism. There are contradictory clues, and it’s our imagination that finds different ways to resolve the discrepancies. It’s great work.

PS - D, I’ve always loved the delicate precision of his line drawing in the paintings. Do you know what he’s using? Is it chalk, or conte crayon, or something else? Does he seal it w/ something?

I think the aspect most likely to strike me and draw me in would be the figure at the window.

The most photographic bit?

Leslie,

Even with the cultural references supplied by others, I still can’t decode the picture. Any you know what? I like it that way. This really is a picture to let the imagination run with.

Earlier this week, Guy Yates posted this picture which, minus the colour, has similar properties.

“Hard and unforgiving”?

It seems to me that a constant theme running through your work is the relation between the worlds of a parent (”pills”) and a child (”stuffed animals”). I like how they define one another: a adult unable to handle parenting? a neglected child, left to imaginary friends? The work feels personal.

But is it? I am not certain (and maybe I am not suppose to know) what your “position” is on this. Why? Because everything is painted equally. The same strokes, tone, shapes (and maybe that is why the pills appear so “literal” to me (and you)). I was just proposing this: if pills are “hard and unforgiving” (like I have experienced them to be) and their consequences, ultimately real, how should one paint them? Certainly they are not to play with. Or were they?

Often, I feel the limitations of painting. That it is difficult to not have a painting be about painting. I guess that is why I am often drawn to paintings that just accept this. For example, “Unholy Ghost (interior view)” (2003) by Leslie Holt.

As for “…IG”? What a curious reversal: it is simply your “visual clue” (though as I said I cannot figure out how to reverse the “G” here, without taking a picture of it and then making it transparent and flipping it vertically). Of course (or, I guess not), I read it as a direct reference to Oscar the Grouch.

RSaunders? He shows at Stephen Wirtz Gallery in SF (which by the way is a terrific gallery) and somewhere in Paris. (note: his work is big and the detail of his drawings is small).

http://www.wirtzgallery.com/

Do you like his work?

I’m going to see him tomorrow night. They’re screening his new film at the LA County Museum, and he’s giving a talk afterwards. Am looking forward to it. I’ve read some interesting interviews w/ him over the years.

A neighbor of Paul’s :)
Twin Peaks was shot in his neighborhood

I’d like you to know that I ate at the Mar-T before Lynch came along and made it famous. I don’t recall whether the coffee was any good or not.

I don’t go there now. North Bend is too… well, let me put it this way - they have stop lights.