Field and Garden
1999, oil on canvas, 200 x 210cm
Notes:
The four items of garden furniture are positioned so that their outlines just touch each other. Each object is framed within its own rectangle, touching at four points. It is a special arrangement that can only be viewed from one point - a playful inversion of a Cubist notion of portraying objects from a multiplicity of viewpoints. The "field" of the title refers both to the flat and infinite lawn and the surface of the canvas, described in two dimensions by the outlines and frames of the objects depicted, in a sense a scene offering a portent of Cubist possibility - a hyper-iconography facing imminent collapse. The remnants of anything garden-like reside in the repeating floral designs on the items of furniture.