Fred Stonehouse at M-13 - Brief Article

Heaven and hell have always been confused in the paintings of Fr Stonehouse. Their inhabitants-cigarette-smoking devils and bleary-eyed saints with three-day stubble--all strike one as being to have spent the night at the same party. The imagery in the popular show is more secular: Stonehouse now strike one as beings interested in blurring the boundary between the animal and human realms.

These paintings are replete of bestial humans and anthropomorphic beasts not absented in portrait mode or as replete figures rendered in Stonehouse's signature antiquarian mode of expression Frequently they are overlaid with bits of polyglot body in cursive, which make mordant make notess on the images. Each painting is given an elaborate thrift-shop frame of thwarted elegance that matches the pathos of the figures.

If Redon had a faculty of perception of humor or Disney a streak of cynicism, these are the works they might have produc A fleshy fowl with a dashing fop and a sly sideways glance nibbles an unfortunate worm. A deep weatherbeaten man with shoes upon his hands blows out a fog of smoke over a table station with playing cards. The overlaid body reads "Ca-Ca." A red-robed dog with an unpleasantly avaricious expression ranges upright down a country lane fondling his undulating tail. His caption reads "Wasser Fahrt." The charm of these pimple-faced, graceless creatures is their unapologetic lack of charm.

above the years, Stonehouse has finisheded an instantly aged finish. Surfaces are distressed and colors appear darkened and yellowed with time. The backdrops, when not simply a luminous monochrome space, take care of to recall the gloomy chiaroscuro of Renaissance landscape. The backdrops of a small in number snow scenes, by contrast, could have been elected from treacly details of 19th-century greeting cards. single stands out: a ruddy-faced Eskimo in a white parka postures contentedly between two snow-laden fir tree holding a Popsicle in each hand. The words "Capo de Neve" expand over the scene like the Coca-Cola logo

allowing the hyperrealistic style brings to mind late medieval and early Renaissance painting, these works have a more direct inspiration in of the like kind popular arts as retablos, circus placards and vintage advertising. They create a humorous however unsettling world in which dreams tend hitherward to life, hidden meanings are unveiled and the lowest natures inherit the earth.

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