Expanding foam, spray paint, tule
9’x5′, 2021
‘Raft of medusa,’ an over-life-sized oil painting by French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which shows people set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft. This work connected to a feeling of longing for my home country during the travel ban of Covid-19. I drew with expanding foam on the tule and created an abstraction of the original linework and composition in Géricault’s work. The backdrop for this painting is a spraypaint iteration of my work ‘Clayton soil’ depicting an abstraction of the West Texas landscape. The transparency of the tule is the fading of the positive emotions around living in the vastness of America.