Inaugural 600x800mm Mixed media and collage

Paints were traditionally named from the places they come from (eg Raw Siena – natural earth of Siena) and many art materials are associated with place-names now for various other reasons. My materials become the metaphor of President Obama (the black permanent marker and the tempera block) and the worldwide origins of the population of America. In his inaugural address the President said “we are a patchwork nation” and I thought of the Betsy Ross patchwork flag and the fact that no western population now has an unchanging ethnicity. The work is therefore created in the style of a patchwork and an annotated preliminary design for something else forever in the making.