On the case
2024-03
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On the case
Mersh working late in his office at the back of the club: tipped back in a desk chair in a wife beater with a cigarette, a bottle of whisky and a poured glass at his elbow, an ashtray beside them. The wall behind is covered in photographs joined up with red string, and a black cat sits on the desk watching him.
The board fills the entire upper half of the sheet and the figure sits low and side-on beneath it, so the case is physically above him and he is dwarfed by it. The chair's base and castors are drawn out at the bottom with nothing around them, which isolates him further.
Cold grey and slate through the room and the chair, against the warm amber of the whisky and the one strip of daylight blue behind the board. The red string is the only saturated colour on the sheet.
Ink line with restrained washes, the board built from many small tinted rectangles so it reads as a mass of evidence rather than individual pictures. The floor is left as bare paper with a single grey shadow laid under the chair.
Watercolour and ink in a spiral-bound sketchbook, photographed as a page.
No signature within the painted area.
On the case