Thanksgiving Card 2017 . Copyright Jerry W. McDaniel 1996
Breakfast with Matisse and Mondrian
Medium: Mixed media, acrylic, cheese-cloth, and Pantone markers on paper
Size: 9 ½ “ x 13”
Date: 1996
This was a painting for the cover of a book of breakfast-style menus, showing all the different kinds of things you can have for breakfast.
The composition was executed in a very Mondrian style. If you look at the painting carefully you will see lines running through it. There are horizontal lines and vertical lines and all the shapes are coming together in rectangles. This gives you the composition of the whole painting.
The various elements on the table are in the style of Matisse.
I created the painting in “mixed media”. What does this mean? There are many things inside the painting: a piece of cheesecloth as part of the table cloth, straight acrylic, and Pantone markers. The intellectuals will understand this; the farmers, I don’t know and I don’t care.
At that time I did this cover I was doing many other things: teaching at FIT/SUNY, doing advertising campaigns, posters and various book covers. I did the entire Zane Gray and S.S. Van Dine collection. That’s how you make a living. You do not make money creating one piece at a time.
I did this book cover for Prentice-Hall. I was mad at the production team for not making a color correction proof. As a consequence the color came out extremely red and that killed everything. I do not have a copy of the book. I disliked it so much that I destroyed it.