Blog about my 2024 series: "Interior Design" or "ID" for short.

I started this series by drawing on my canvas with a Pierre Noire HB pencil, and the jug was the first image to appear- I believe straight from my subconscious. Then, I more or less decided that I would proceed with representing things I have enjoyed drawing/painting through my long 34 year career as a visual artist.

I designed the corner of a room- because I like to paint architectural motifs, but only in their simplest aspects. In this room are the elements or objects that I also like to paint: a shuttered window on the back wall, a curtain on the right wall coming forward in perspective. The right corner of a table is in a tartan or checkered cloth, and on it sit- from right to left- a curvaceous jug with abstract motif at its center, and a cup and saucer. These two objects have shadows which do not touch. The window has a ledge, which had no shadow in the first painting but which has one in most of the subsequent works. 

Everything symbolizes something for me, and the ideas come from different sources: general lore, an esoteric cult I was part of during my thirties, and my own inventions. The jug which has water in it, represents TRUTH. The motif on it, a splatter of dripped paint which is sometimes reworked- is its main WEAKNESS. The cup holding something warm like tea, coffee or cocoa- is UNDERSTANDING. The closed window symbolizes SECRETIVENESS, or a suspicious personality. It shutters-in the whole room. The handles of the shutters and the splattered jug element are united by being the complementary color to the main hue, and they symbolize a KEY. The curtain means DEATH as a moving wall, something that can beat Fate.

I must add that the series is just as well an excuse for exploring COLOR: "I love the colors" being the comment of many viewers who have remarked on my work over the years. I enjoy discovering in my pictures the ever changing relationships between tones of the same or similar- hues, and which are achieved by adding to them varying amounts of white and the complementary colors.

My drawing (and painting) in all of the pieces is freehand, making individual works sometimes extremely different from one another, something which I consider a definite bonus. For instance, in "...violets n purple", the window looks like a painting more than a window, and the wood shutters have been transformed into abstract markings. There, the symbolism would be that art is the most IMPORTANT thing in my psyche.

The title(s): "Interior Design" and "ID" are explanatory of the facts that the pieces are both a design done by a decorator (myself), and an expression of my inner life (or identity).