The Decoys 1940

Conroy Maddox made "The Decoys" using watercolor to compose the figures out of flat geometric shapes. The painting is full of these shapes! Maddox has built his figures out of rectangles and trapezoids, using color to construct the bodies. It's wild, like a collage that's been painted over with thin washes of color, pinks and mauves and blues, all layered together. I love the one foot, the black cone, a bizarre heel to balance the entire figure! The texture is key – see how the thin paint allows the paper to shine through, giving the whole piece a kind of translucent glow. Maddox really makes me think of Dorothea Tanning. They both used surrealism to create a similar sense of unease and dream-like logic, but with wildly different results. Ultimately, "The Decoys" reminds us that art is about play, about embracing the absurd, and about finding new ways to see the world.