1973

From the Series: Rubbings from the Calcium Garden . . . Firechildren

American, 1934 - 2018

Irving Petlin began the series Rubbings from the Calcium Garden in 1969, producing one painting a year until 1977. In the series, the artist uses a distended oval to contain the paintings' allegorical worlds. In Firechildren, a landscape that resembles calcium deposit formations frames a scene in which shapes evoke rocks and stalagmites and amorphous human figures emerge from the fiery depths of the foreground. Petlin's repetitive pressing of various materials soaked with paint onto the surface of the canvas results in a formless yet evocative composition. This technique recalls decalcomania, an image transfer method adopted by Surrealist artists earlier in the century.