Tonight I went to an exhibition at Mcdaniel college featuring Lillian Bayley Hoover. It was a series of paintings of dolls in American settings that "investigate the unsettling realm of international political conflict." Many Americans have been experiencing the Iraq war from a distance but as the soldiers come back, we will learn the truth, their experiences, pains, struggles, etc. The plastic dolls represent us and how the Iraq war has touched us. They are supposed to represent "individuals, living in the uneasy utopia of a model world. External signifiers suggesting a greater embattled reality interrupt the this world, imposing themselves on the viewer."(- from artist statement) It's true that most Americans don't have a close friends or family in Iraq and it does not affect them directly. My godchild's father/best friend's husband is currently in Iraq and i pray every day that he will come home safe and sound. It doesn't hit me as hard as my best friend but I see what this war has done to the family of the soldiers gone.
I thought it was interesting to see i each painting what she painted in focus and what was left blurred. A lot of them didn't have a real obvious meaning so we spent a lot of time examining each one.
["war tv" 58x46 oil on canvas2006]
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