YES (You Complete the Picture)
I use found words and images to create work with, hopefully, multiple layers of meaning. The picture plane, interrupted by the lettering, reveals the underlying architecture and the tension between the two. The paint-by-number genre serves as a visual vocabulary and an access point for the viewer to enter the work. Stella McCartney knew my work, I guess, and asked me to create a backdrop for her Paris runway show in 2009. We talked about her collection, which was very colorful and quite optimistic, and I proposed a few ideas. She liked one based on a ’50s paint-by-numbers of the Arc de Triomphe with the word YES blocked out. The final painting was huge: 18 by 32 feet. I painted it in London and added “LA MCCARTNEY” on a shop awning as a sort of French/English pun. The venue where the show was held, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, was just blocks from the actual monument. The people in the painting are carrying umbrellas and the streets are wet; the morning of the show it rained, so life was doing its best to imitate the art. This print is based on a smaller version (still pretty big, at 6 by 8 feet) that I made in 2010.
