Week One - #4

Gordon Mitchell

Twenty One

Oil on canvas

This surrealist painting is the one piece of artwork that has really stuck with me since my visit. I have always loved surrealism but sometimes I feel the artists go overboard with their sense of wonder portraying too many subjects at once. This painting is unlike that in that it gives you one odd phenomenon to mull over it’s meaning. The realism technique of painting is well served and perfect for this piece. My interpretation of the meaning comes from the title of the piece, “Twenty One”. I am aware that this is the number of dots that all sides of the die add up to but I think in this piece it has to do with age. I feel that the gray-haired man is looking back at what it meant to be twenty-one on the verge of adulthood. I believe the dice is a good choice because it is indeed a tool for a childhood game, but this particular dice is made of stone and weathered and cracked. I imagine that looking back on your life can be a very surreal thing and something people don’t do very often.