You Are Here is an evocative painting that is at once playful and foreboding. The title and the focal red dot immediately call to mind informational maps of the type one might find in a shopping mall or an amusement park. On these maps, the red dot represents the viewer’s location in respect to his or her surroundings. In this respect, the painting is a whimsical reinterpretation of a mundane object found in everyday life, a surface meaning instantly recognizable to the viewer.
Yet there is an intriguing undercurrent of danger that belies the painting’s playful choice of subject. The red dot, which represents the viewer, is not placed on an ordinary map, but rather is placed in the landscape of a dark, menacing whirlwind. The surroundings of the red dot, and therefore the viewer, seem ready to engulf the dot at any moment. The dark, swirling lines of the painting appear three-dimensional, as though the red dot is surrounded on all signs, leaving no route for escape. You Are Here is a skillfully created piece that draws upon a recognizable, common object to evoke in a very personal way the ordinarily unseen dangers of the surrounding world.
©1998-2009 Claretta Taylor Webb. All Rights Reserved
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