

I felt a need to accurately depict my chess library. I did not want to merely suggest a large library. To convey the depth of chess acumen, it had to be a microcosmic version of a full library; not with the Dewey Decimal System, but the way a chess player might arrange it according to the divisions of the game and chess research categories. This may seem a bit much, but any player who has troubled to climb even a single plateau in the foothills of chess skill will soon be aware of the treacherous terrain which awaits high above.



The Elo rating system is a 3,000 point bell curve. Every 200 points comprises a norm and when you consider that any player on the scale who is rated 200 points higher than his opponent enjoys a 76% win expectancy ratio over that opponent, you begin to realize how vertical the ascent must be. This is why the library is depicted in excruciating detail, right down to the titles and publishers' logos on the bindings.



I admit that a few of the book titles are my own invention, an homage of sorts to Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century adventurer who found the source of the Nile. A linguist, explorer, and duellist, he was also a practical joker. He printed up dust jackets with mirthful book-titles, the idea being to trifle a bit with the very proper guests invited to his wife's tea soirées. Just before partygoers arrived, Burton would slip the dust jackets onto some of his books and leave them lying about on the end tables. The one title that sticks in my memory is, "The History of Farting in the Shetland Islands."



It would be impractical, even impossible, to paint a screened view of an exterior scene. The screen and the exterior cannot share the same "depth of field," to borrow the photographic term. If a viewer's eyes are looking at the screen, the exterior view is completely out of focus. If the viewer is looking through the screen to the exterior view, then the screen is out of focus. Ideally, to create the appropriate illusion with art, some compromise between the extremes must be engineered. In any event, this scene's focus field would be even closer to the viewer than the screen, so both screen and exterior view are depicted nebulously rather than crisply.



I first painted a very impressionistic exterior. Then I created a series of "horizontal" dull gold lines emanating from vanishing point left. Finally, I covered all with a grid of vertical but semi-transparent dark gray lines proceeding from the nadir vanishing point. The result is that the screen door area is "crosshatched" into tiny squares which collectively add up to 25% background exterior scene, 25% dull gold squares (representing sunlight reflected off the screen wire itself), 25% semi-transparent dark gray over dull gold, and 25% semi-transparent dark gray over background exterior scene. This is one of very few paintings for which I conducted an industrial time study, but at least now you know why it took some 1,250 hours!



