Description

Joshua Petker. Dont Walk Away. Edition Size: 50. 16 x 18 inches Giclee on 330gsm 100% Archival Cotton Paper. $60. The contradicting visual elements in Don't Walk Away - the clear linear quality of the two women situated behind the swirling fantasy in the foreground - actually enhance the work's charm and its subtle use of symbol. The woman being restrained bears a flourish of colors on her dress, but what exactly do those colors mean? Are we looking at a necklace or an adornment of flowers? If so, from whence or from whom? And the obviously concerned woman behind her? Why the desire to keep her friend from whatever goal or rendezvous she has in mind? Everything Josh Petker is presenting so economically here is prelude to speculation and wonder. The painting, Don't Walk Away, was painted as a part of the exhibition, We're Not As Colorful As We Think We Are, which opened at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco in September of 2010. The series of paintings placed figures between landscapes of abstraction and negative space in an attempt to illustrate the balance humans experience between their private conscious reality and the reality of the physical universe that we all experience our individual consciousness within. Don't Walk Away was chosen by the artist as one of his favorite works from the series.