Honesty 2020

Michael Cheval made this painting, Honesty, with oils. It’s a trip, right? With the sort of fairytale princess vibe, a painterly surface of greens and reds, like the stuff of myth. I get this feeling that Cheval spent a lot of time layering the paint, building up a surface that almost shimmers. Look at the orchid, it's so precise, so deliberately placed. It makes me think about the old masters, but then I catch the humor, that theatrical quality, and I’m thrown somewhere else entirely. What was he thinking about when he put that pearl necklace on her? Is that really Honesty? Is he sending something up? I bet Cheval admires Magritte and Dali, the way he twists reality into something just beyond our grasp. I think all us painters play off each other like that, a game of visual tag across time. It's a conversation, an argument, an ongoing exploration. And what’s honest anyway? Is the painting honest? Or is it about honesty, or the pretense of it, or maybe even the lack of it?