The Drawers - Scott Waters    Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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Narrative?

A boyish commentary covers the floral wallpaper with insistence. It is an adamant insertion of masculinity onto domestic fussiness. The submarines, planes, burning fields and black clouds of smoke with the seemingly strategic placement of the visuals (as if they are engaged in battle) are energetically more important than the back drop. Even the birds and animals feel rugged as if they were a memory from a boy scout outing. The overlays are brilliantly painted and the admiration of a facile hand creates another layering as the adept rendering connotes talent and practice. The military imagery upon the feminine patterns manipulates our gender precepts with the slight confusion of a confrontation with a cross-dresser. The work has an out-of sync component that doesn't quite allow the allusions to the hallucinations of a bed-ridden boy to rest in the land of simple imaginative ruminating. There is social commentary behind the juxtapositions.

Based on his life as a soldier and accurate to the extent of verging on illustration, the loose handling of the ground (taped and ragged edged wallpaper) with its imperfect familiarity sets up the scenes. It is an invitation to further the narrative. The individual pieces can be placed strategically as well. There is room for a second creation, a pitting of machines with the wilderness as they are hung. Unlike the solidity of a mural or fresco and yet not quite a picture hanging on a wall, the wallpaper panels further the metaphors as they act, as wallpaper was intended, as wall dressings.

Whose room is this? A schizophrenic psyche is present.
 

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