Interlude 

John Michael Carter’s painting, Interlude, is composed with oil paint on canvas. The artist’s chosen medium is inextricably linked to its modes of production. The canvas and the process of stretching it are of course highly important. And then there are the readymade tubes of pigment, mixed to a commercially determined formula. The canvas is laid with thick impasto strokes, the layering of colors creating depth and texture across the entire surface. The material’s inherent qualities of viscosity and opacity lend themselves to the impressionistic style, as if Carter is less interested in depicting a scene, and more invested in evoking a sense of atmosphere. Yet in painting the trappings of bourgeois leisure – floral textiles, fine porcelain – Carter also points to the labor that enables this apparent idyll. Paying attention to materials, making, and context encourages us to look beyond the surface of images, to grasp the complex social realities they reflect.