Desert Star 2018

Carrie Graber painted this scene, titled "Desert Star," using oil on canvas. This material has a long and storied history, associated with artistic virtuosity, and historically, the wealth required to commission such work. The key here is to look past the bright and cheerful scene, and to think about what paint actually *is*. It's pigment, bound together by oil. Making paint from scratch is labor intensive, so it's more likely that Graber used commercially produced colors. She then deployed them with considerable skill, moving the brush across the canvas to create the illusion of a sun-drenched modernist scene. But it is an illusion, created by labor, and tied to all the wider social issues of consumption, leisure and the art market, to which this canvas now belongs. Ultimately, understanding the materials, making and context is essential to understanding the meaning of an artwork, and challenging traditional notions of art.