Things Meld (24" x 32", oil on canvas, Sept. 1999) Next picture     Previous picture     1999 Gallery     Paintings     Home © 1999 by Alec Clayton

For a while I tried, unsuccessfully, to combine realistic figure painting with abstracted organic “creatures.” One of those included a portrait of my son. Above him and much smaller in scale was a naked woman seen from behind. The rest of the painting was a kind of abstract surrealism. It was never a successful painting. Ten years after doing it, I painted over it and ended up with this. What had been the collar and shoulder of his blue and pink striped shirt remains in the lower right corner. To the left of that is a kind of droopy breast shape, which had originally been part of a chin, and above that in the upper right hand corner is a similar shape that in the original painting had been the retreating rear end of the nude. Everything else from the old painting has been totally obliterated. My friend Catherine saw how the blue shape in the center pours into the big red shape and commented that "things meld." That, of course, is how I came up with the title. Catherine helps me title a lot of my paintings.