Detectives V1. pop art painting
A major contribution is the striking red-haired woman in a red suit with Doug’s familiar overlaid grid pattern.
She is framed in a panel that separates her from the other action. The silver-grey background suggests her reflection in a mirror, or perhaps gazing out from a window.
Her expression hovers between concerned observation and involvement, reflecting the complex role of women in detective fiction: both empowered and at risk.
A likely murder victim
She is looking at the stockinged legs of a likely murder victim in the abstract chaos that perhaps represents both a patterned carpet and the symbolic bright red flows of blood at a murder scene.
*Artist Doug Kemp with the Detective V1 Painting
Detective in Shades Of grey
Two detectives in shades of grey, as they would have appeared in the old black-and-white films that so inspired Doug, also appear to be observing and discussing the chaotic scene before them. They are set against a background of horizontally split images, as if viewed through a Venetian blind, revealing glimpses of other possible characters in the plot.
A flash or lightning motif cuts through the right-hand side, further intensifying the drama. The piece is a multi-layered tableau, effectively capturing tension as part film still and part the stylised drama of mid-20th century pulp fiction.
