From The Vault: Different Bathers.

Different Bathers was created back in 2016 in the midst of one of many periods of excessive production. At the time I was painting almost entirely large-scale and had recently begun to integrate a wider variety of styles and aesthetics into the paintings. More representational depictions of humans also started making a comeback after years of more abstracted figures and flat, graphic shapes and symbols.

Largely, the paintings remained fairly shallow in depth. Often objects and figures floated over large swatches of color in fairly indeterminate settings. In some instances  the color became the setting, a pool in the case of "Different Bathers", but often the background largely acted as a backdrop to set off the featured objects or symbols. 

I remember thinking I had stumbled across something interesting with this painting. Not only was it on a larger scale than even I was used to at 48x84", but I felt like it had broken away from some of my more derivative habits and that had exemplified much of my painting up to that point. The stereotypical Basquiat-esque graphics and drawings were replaced with a more somber and melancholic tone. Figures replaced associations of objects, bringing a direct sense of humanity where previous paintings held a bit of sterility or distance. Even the background became an important player in the narrative. While this painting kept the solid colored background, instead of a backdrop it created a scene. Following this painting my backgrounds obtained depth and a more purposeful connection to the rest of the scene.

The painting made its public debut at the VAR Gallery Annual Figure Show back in 2017 but has been in storage since. It remains an all-time favorite of mine and I think it is a great example of the transitional period between my more illustrative/graphic style I explored in the half-decade after college and the landscape-based paintings from the last few years.