MICHAEL CAINES
Artwork
Oil on canvas 42 x 30 in.
Oil on canvas 60 x 68 in.
Oil on canvas 48 x 36 in.
Oil on canvas 42 x 30 in.
Biography
In Michael Caines’ work domesticated animals are posed against backdrops drawn from historical paintings, opulent furniture magazines, and toile wallpaper samples. He may drop a hen into the corner of a Fragonard painting, or place a Persian cat in an ad for knock-off Louis XIV armchairs. The pathos, affection, and humor of these portraits of over-bred animals is intertwined with Caines’ interest in the consumption of the animal world as a kind of luxury good.
These self-aware dogs, cats, and hens pose with an earnestness customarily reserved for human portraiture, and serve as surrogates for their imagined human owners, absent from these pictures. His intention is to paint with both gravitas and tongue planted firmly in cheek in works where staring into the eye of a chicken is to confront the human condition at its most profound and ridiculous.
