A Layered Narrative In The Artist’s Studio
This painting invites the viewer into a layered narrative. Situated in an artist’s studio, the woman with black hair, assumed to be a model, reclines naked on the bed.
The artist appears to be in the very act of painting, indicated by the palette in his hand, and he would be expected to be working on an image of the reclining model which should be on the easel.
Surprise Portrait
However, it appears that the artist’s mind is actually on a totally different idea, perhaps for a future work.
This could be the blond-haired woman, who appears to have been represented, as if in his imagination, in a glass-like panel thereby obscuring the reality of the expected image of the model posing.
*Artist Doug Kemp with The Studio V2 Painting
Part of the artist’s body appears to have slipped into the glass-like panel, perhaps into the artist’s imaginary world and is represented by the translucent form of this part of his body. All of this is in a fleeting snapshot of time.
Items typical of those expected to be found in an artist’s studio, such as a small wooden mannequin and ready-made still life subjects – almost as a cliche, are incorporated in the work and there also is a “cabinet of curiosities” or “cabinet of wonder”, containing a jumble of different items.
