Bear Chair

BEAR CHAIR Acrylic on Canvas | 36" × 36" | 2018

It is inviting. It is also perverse. Both things are completely true.

Bear Chair is painted after a taxidermy chair made entirely of bear parts — a real object, made in the 1900s, that exists in the world with the particular combination of craftsmanship and moral horror that defines an era's relationship with the natural world and with the animals it consumed without apology. The chair is furry and therefore inviting — the body wants to sit in it. The mind catches up a moment later and the moment of catching up is the whole subject of this painting.

The bear is rendered in deep crimson, burgundy and near-black against a ground of raw, bleeding pink — the colour of flesh, of embarrassment, of something that should perhaps not be looked at directly but absolutely must be. The brushwork is urgent and physical, the fur built up in layered marks that give the surface a texture you can almost feel, the claws painted with the careful attention they deserve as the last remaining evidence of what this animal actually was before it became furniture.

This is painting as ethical confrontation — not didactic, not comfortable, not resolved. The tension is the point. The beauty is real. The perversity is real. The bear was real. The chair exists. The questions it raises about our dominion over the natural world, our casual disregard for the sovereign right of animals and plants to exist on their own terms, have not been answered in the century since it was made and are considerably more urgent now.

Bear Chair is a significant conceptual work dressed in the clothes of a painterly one. It will make you want to sit down and then immediately reconsider.

📦 Shipping & Details

• 36" × 36" original acrylic on canvas
• Signed and dated 2018
• Please contact us to discuss shipping options
• Certificate of authenticity included

One original. No reproductions. It is inviting. It is also perverse.