New painting: "The Fence" 2016-2017

Finishing touches applied to "The Fence"

“We have a special fielder position for you!” This is the boy’s cue to go through the maintenance hole in the chain link fence, and stay there during the duration of the recess baseball game. The boy’s compliance is preferred to the alternative outcome if he dares to actually join in the game. If he chooses to confront the situation in any way, the humiliation would only be that much more intense.

The strands of the wire fence are purposely in a perspective where they are larger and thicker where the boy’s face is and smaller and thinner where his left hand is. Because where the strands intersect with the boy’s face, it is as if the strands become a mask, much like the mask of a world weary super hero who must contend with too much villainy. 

The flat monochromatic purple shirt of the boy totally blends in with the flat monochromatic asphalt of the residential street behind him. As if to emphasize the perception by his classmates, that he is a non-entity. In contrast to that there is some life by way of some colour within the boy’s face and hands as if there is still a remnant of a mind that is yearning to thrive.

As one with a cognitive disability, the boy like most with cognitive disabilities, is uncomfortably transparent in their social awkwardness, clumsiness and fallibility. Where the boys hands touch the fence, the strands of the fence begin to glow because the boy has an epiphany to the fact that his classmates, although less transparent in their fallibility are as much so as he is. Because of this realization, the fence unjustly separates all who are commonly flawed.

The tree in the background beside the residence, is highly stylized to add continuity, mimics the spherical shape of the boy’s head. The sun reflecting on the leaves and its illuminating effect, represents the belief that the boy’s discovery is not just from his own imagination.