true

Original artwork.

Unframed, canvas sides are painted white.
Painting is wired and ready to hang.
Signed, titled and dated on back.

This painting is based on Leonardo da Vinci's painting, Lady with an Ermine. As with much of my work, I enjoy the tension and contrast between realism and flat, 2D decorative elements. Renaissance artists like Leonardo worked to capture the truth of what they saw through techniques using light, linear and atmospheric perspective, etc, to create depth and space. In modern and contemporary art, artists seek to convey a different kind of truth, one that says the canvas or painting surface is flat. This painting plays off these ideas of truth.

As I began this painting, my first thought was to exclude the ermine, but being such an iconic element in the painting, I didn't feel that it was working as well without it. So at one point decided it should be pink. The finger tattoos, which read "true" give the painting it's title and reference the idea of truth and illusion in painting.

Tags: animal  woman  text  blue