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Preview image of work. encaustic and collage on paper mounted on foamcore,  Shaker Chair and Quilt 10532

1990.2

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Shaker Chair and Quilt

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Artist

David C. Driskell (Eatonton, Georgia, 6/7/1931 - 4/1/2020)

Title

Shaker Chair and Quilt

Creation Date

1988

Century

20th century

Dimensions

31 3/8 in. x 22 5/8 in. (79.69 cm x 57.5 cm)

Object Type

collage

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

encaustic and collage on paper mounted on foamcore

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

1990.2

Born in Eatonton, Georgia, David C. Driskell’s first sojourn in Maine was in 1953, when he was twenty-two. At that time, he was an undergraduate student studying fine arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Howard made it possible for Driskell to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on a scholarship that summer. There, Driskell met Leonard Bocour (1910–1993), the paint manufacturer and founder of Bocour Artists Colors. As Resident Faculty that year, Bocour taught a laboratory course on artists’ materials, and Driskell was his assistant. Driskell’s penchant for studio alchemy is on full display in Shaker Chair and Quilt. Driskell favored encaustic for his collage paintings; it provided an excellent binder and transparentizer for the multiple textured materials he deployed, including torn strips of painted paper, prints, magazines, and foil or gauze. When burnished, the melted wax provides a surface brilliance and luminous functional depth that allows his collage elements to seemingly oscillate or dance. This play of flatness and spatial illusionism, fixed suspension, and rhythmic movement courses through his encaustic work of this era. Julie L. McGee Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Art History, University of Delaware, Newark