Suellen's Corness Painting
Maker
Suellen Rocca
(American, 1943 - 2020)
Date1967
MediumOil on canvas with artist's painted padded border and frame
DimensionsPanel: 72 15/16 × 50 1/4 in. (185.3 × 127.6 cm)
Framed: 73 5/8 × 50 7/8 in. (187 × 129.2 cm)
Framed: 73 5/8 × 50 7/8 in. (187 × 129.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of Dennis Adrian in honor of Don Baum
Collections
Object number2001.383
Status
Not on viewPainted on a canvas stretched behind an upholstered cornice that Rocca found in her studio, Suellen’s Cornice Painting is using architecture to frame personal experience. Curtains frame a view of the knotty pine that clad her studio and the curtain cloth form an autobiographical tapestry richly adorned with a sea of figures. Together with the outer band of familiar-looking pictures extracted from popular image circulation—advertising, magazines, and cartoons—, these glyphs hint at a personal narrative. As their inspiration, the artist cites:
"all these little images that we constantly read. They are so familiar that we just take them for granted and yet they are kind of strange in their own way. I did think of them as a kind of picture writing."
"all these little images that we constantly read. They are so familiar that we just take them for granted and yet they are kind of strange in their own way. I did think of them as a kind of picture writing."
