Small Boats, Houses

Jennifer Bartlett

Part of the Contemporary Art Collection

In 1985, Jennifer Bartlett began a series of paintings with the theme of small boats and houses. As part of her work on these paintings, she built models of boats (a metaphor for travel) and houses (representing home). For this work, Bartlett built three dimensional models of boats and houses based on how these objects look in the two dimensional painting. The distortions of foreshortening or perspective read correctly on a two dimensional surface, but become odd when transferred to a three dimensional form. "Small Boats and Houses" explores our experience of art as a real object and as an illusion or fiction created by the artist.