Leave at Door I

A painting of teal-green plastic takeout bag sitting on a doormat in front of a door, as seen from above. The doormat, door, and right wall use diagonal lines and orientations to lead you into the frame. Only the bottom of the deep blue front door is in frame; we see just above the bottom of two panels on the door. A harsh shadow divides the painting from left to right. Over half of the door and one third of the bag is in shadow. Lit parts of the painting are painted with detail in a realistic manner, but parts of the image in shadow are just very painterly large colorful brush strokes with minimal detail—mostly just loose, gestural color shapes. The bag has a receipt stuck to it using what appears to be an alcohol container seal sticker for restaurants serving to-go cocktails. The portion of the door in shadow has colors separating between blue and brown. The door frame in shadow has a light teal-blue plate with pink, lemon, salmon, and mint parts of the vertical door frame. The receipt and sticker have no real words, just painted nonsense characters.

Jake Johnson

2021. Acrylic on handmade panel. 24 1/8 by 24 1/8 by 2 inches. Image described by the artist.