Marie Vernet 2014

Pietropoli Patrick, born in 1953, painted Marie Vernet with the help of who knows what, somewhere in his studio. Just look at this painting within a painting! I can see Patrick’s going back and forth, shifting things around, probably using both thick and thin layers of paint. I imagine him staring at the canvas, maybe a bit perplexed, but definitely in conversation with that mysterious lady behind the stripes. What was he thinking as he made it? Is it a portrait? Is it not? I can't tell. Maybe those stripes are like the bars of a cage, or maybe they’re just there to mess with our heads, turning the painting into a visual puzzle. It’s like he’s inviting us to question what a painting really is, who it represents, and how it relates to other paintings that came before. That’s what painting is all about—a never-ending exchange of ideas across time.