The Story of a Painting

Author
William E. Elston

Published
Dec 06, 2017

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This humble still life began as a large figure subject, during the time that I was living in New York City. The model was a woman who danced with the Twyla Tharp Dance Company. She was also the wife of a friend, although they were shortly divorced.

She was a restless model, and often missed sessions. When she did pose she became easily distracted and bored, and would think of any excuse to get out of it. Finally out of frustration, I decided to cut my losses and crop out the only area of the painting that got any consistent attention.

I didn’t have a camera at the time, or I might have been able to finish the figure composition with photo references. Unfortunately my camera had been stolen in Boston, in a break-in at Curt Hanson’s Back Bay apartment. I didn’t acquire another camera until I moved back to Spokane in the early 1980s.

Every painting is a confluence of desire and circumstance. One can never quite march one’s vision into the realm of our conditional world without encountering unexpected and bitter sacrifice. Sometimes it’s a failure of technique in the face of spectacular terrestrial phenomena, sometimes it’s just a model with a flakey attitude. Although this painting was just background ephemera in a corner of the original composition, I think it makes a nice statement on its own.

The painting is from the collection of my old friends Michael Moore and Libby Kopczynski.