PRESIDENT TRUMP'S CHAIR

PRESIDENT TRUMP'S CHAIR
by Andy Weddington
Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair. Alberto Giacometti 

The style of chair behind President Trump's Oval Office desk, I've no idea. 

But it has four legs. 

For the past several weeks, while thinking about our new President and his Oval Office chair, I have been looking at and thinking about an unremarkable but interesting chair. 

The chair is green. Simple. And molded plastic. It sits on a screened porch. It has seen better days though still functional. Never would it make it into the Oval Office. 

But its line and shape - simplicity - interests me. 

So I sketched it in Sharpie.

Note the four legs visible.

Some days later sunlight on the chair caught my attention.

So, in acrylic, I painted the chair's portrait.

Note the four legs visible. 

About a week later, moved to the other side of the porch, sunlight on the chair again caught my attention. 

So, in acrylic, I again painted the chair's portrait. 

Note the four legs visible. 

Days later and still thinking about the chair I painted, without preliminary pencil drawing, its portrait in transparent watercolor.

Note the four legs visible. 

While finishing the first watercolor sunlight striking the legs of the chair caught my attention. 

Again I painted in transparent watercolor.

Note but three legs visible. 

Though not following politics too closely the past month or so, there's been no escape the animus towards our new President. 

And that's primarily the reason for thinking about President Trump's Oval Office chair. The buck, as a placard on President Truman's desktop stated, stops with the person sitting in that chair. 

As model, as representative for "the" chair, the molded green plastic chair posed (for me).

Four works with four legs - revealing it's function and strength.

And the last work representing the anti-Trump cohort. 

Simple ...

They've not a chair at the table. Nor a leg to stand (nor sit) on. 

The green molded plastic chair is not President Trump's. And it's not fit to complement the Oval Office desk. 

But maybe there's space on an Oval Office wall for a small painting.

As with the Swiss painter, sculptor, printmaker, Mr. Giacometti, I am only beginning with that chair - for starters, it has great legs! Four of them - strong and tapered.