Figure in Red Room
Artist
Mary Ann Aitken
(American, 1960 - 2012)
Date1985-1986
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions26 × 26 in. (66 × 66 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of the artist, 2008
Object numberUAC3886
DescriptionIn Figure in Red Room, by Mary Ann Aitken, the protagonist stands in the center of the space, alone and still in a terrain of heavy oil paint. While the entire canvas is ladened red, this lone figure beams white while the intensity of the texture distorts their shape, making their contour cloudy as if being conceived in a fuzzy memory or a dissolving dream. Who is this person? Are they real, or imagined? Is it the artist herself or someone else? At 26 x 26 inches, the square format of this painting is typical of Aitken’s oeuvre, as well as her fascination with materiality and beauty in the everyday seemingly mundane. Figure in Red Room took Aitken about a year to complete.During her lifetime, Mary Ann Aitken took more pleasure in creating than she did in exhibiting. While working on her BA and later her MA in Art Therapy around the same time as the Cass Corridor movement in Detroit, Aitken worked humbly in her studio, not exhibiting often. She continued in this way when she moved to Brooklyn to work as an Art Therapist. When Aitken passed in 2012, she left resources for her art to be shared with the world. In 2013, What Pipeline gallery in Detroit featured Aitken’s early works in Black Abstract. The solo show focused on her art from a significant period of her life, 1983-1989, same period in which Figure in Red Room had been created. Her art caught the attention of Tara Downs, the co-founder of Tomorrow Gallery in Toronto. Downs quickly became attracted to Aitken’s emphasis on materiality, and later featured her in one of Tomorrow Gallery’s first few New York shows, Eternal September.
Figure in Red Room was featured in Gallery Project’s (Ann Arbor) 2008 exhibition, Spirit, a group show curated by Aitken’s long time friend and fellow Detroit artist, Ed Fraga. Aitken shortly after gifted it to the Wayne State University Art Collection.
Danielle Cervera Bidigare
Pictue of the Week, 08/13/2018
Paint layer is extremely thick but stable.
This work will require a shipping crate. Must lay flat during transit.
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