Analytical cubism is best understood as the geometric dissection and analytical reconfiguration of a subject (busting an object into geometric shapes and visually pondering how they might be placed back together), utilizing multiple viewpoints within a single view framework (showing the back or side of an object while simultaneously portraying the front), blurring the interactive line of positive and negative space and interweaving these dimensions (obliterating the clear boundary or line between foreground and background), and or the poetic or lyrical representation of a subject. (paint what is interesting, ignore what is not).

In summary cubism is freedom. It is to traditional rendering as what jazz is to classical music. Louis Armstrong bounced around and about the linear structure of often simple tunes; hinting at musical phrases, toying with a familiar line of notes which all could recognize; creating something new, something different and powerful. Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso did the same with visual forms. They took what they wanted, discarded the rest, divided and recombined and wove a new vision of artistic reality. Of course they were led there by Cezanne’s geometric extrapolations of nature, Ingres’s reinvention of the anatomical form, and many, many others who also chose to create or embellish what they found in reality. 

This painting is my attempt at somewhat mimicking the mature style of Braque’s and Picasso’s analytical cubism. My main inspiration was Picasso’s cubist portrait of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. It was very difficult for me to break away from a cubist style I had already developed on my own over many years of experimentation. My tendency to revert to that which I know abounds about the canvas. It was like dancing in someone else’s shoes; and I don‘t dance. The subject is the companion piece to my variation of Vermeer’s “The Artist’s Studio.” It is the finished cubist work the artist at the easel is working on in my studio painting. The title Chase is a double entendre; my chasing after a style so foreign yet so reminiscent of my own and quite wonderfully Chase happens to be the name of the girl who posed for me.