Darker with the Day: Interpretation

     George Rush's exhibition, Darker with the Day, consists of five large paintings which are displayed on what appears to be sheet rock which are painted with simple lines. The paintings and the background are all in neutral shades of black, white, and gray. Each of the paintings depict windows. The painting that is separate from the other four has been painted completely black where the glass would be. The other four paintings all show tables with different objects on them (such as gallon plastic jugs and cardboard drink cartons, and a candle). These four paintings are displayed one per “wall” in a four sided space facing each other. The painted backgrounds placed behind each of the paintings serve as a large frame around each piece. Viewers tended to walk past the initial painting fairly quickly and into the bigger space with the other four paintings. Many seemed to stand back and glance around fairly quickly at each of the remaining four paintings. I noticed several people (including myself) walked behind some of the paintings on the back partition perhaps looking for more paintings. Once viewers discovered there were no more paintings besides those five, they then seemed to travel the typical “art gallery viewing pattern” of getting up a little closer to each piece and spending more time with each one individually.

     In my opinion, the series of paintings represent a perspective of outside looking into a window. At different times of the day, the window is very easy, or very hard to look into from the outside depending on both the time of day and amount of natural light outside, as well as the amount and type of lighting from inside. This seems to parallel Rush's title for the collection “Darker with the Day”. The least detailed time of day from the outside looking into a window is when the sunlight outside is brighter than the lighting inside.

     Without having read the statement that came with the artist's handout from the class prior to the opening, it seems there are a few ways to interpret the collection. On a philosophical level, it could be said that from the outside, everything and everyone vary in the way they are perceived depending upon the circumstances both inside and out. On a more literal level, it could be simply that the artist is saying that you can tell a lot about a house and the people who live in it simply by observing a small fraction of their lives (such as what is on the table at any given point in the day).

     The paintings are interesting because the lack of color causes the viewer to notice the objects, the shading, and parts of the objects that are highlighted or darkened more. Also the use of lines on the walls behind the paintings seem to suggest branches of trees because they are around windows. If the windows paintings were not there, I doubt that the lines alone would so strongly suggest shapes of trees and branches.

Questions:

*Why did you select the particular items that were on the tables in the paintings?

*Were the paintings and backgrounds painted together as one piece or separately? How did you decide?

* Is there significance in the total number of paintings in the series?