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14" x 18"
Commentary courtesy Paul Marasa:
While many of your paintings seem to be attempts to create art from snapshots or discount department store studio portraits, I find the level gaze of many of your paintings' subjects to be pretty arresting. The nuns in question are really something. They're almost two faces of the same nun. The one on the left is benign, a bit sad, perhaps wistfully recalling life before the veil, while the other seems haggard, a bit ill from the weight of marriage to God, even a bit devilish.
I was raised Catholic in the 1960s--and no, I don't have issues with nuns; my 8th grade nun (note the weirdness of that phrase) was a wonder: She encouraged creativity via watercolors and writing, was an older woman who still managed to bolt around--she actually broke her leg playing some game or other. Anyway, those paintings remind me of some of those nuns, especially the odd, superimposed quality nuns had because of their habits--the clothes, not the repeated behaviors. They always seemed a little out of place in the real world.
Writing this, I realize what a Rorschach test thrift store art can be--hey; just like "real" art! Just goes to show: enthusiastic amateurs do approach the frontier border of "civilized," that is, "academic" art. I'm half-convincing myself that this is great stuff. It's like the impressionists vs. the salons.