Democracy
2010, 36 x 60 inches, acrylic on canvas

This is the first painting I did using canvas as a support. It is a pretty straightforward play on the idea of stars in the canton of the original flag. Using a toothpick dipped in various colors of paint, I stippled hundreds of stars onto the blue, attempting to emulate the colors and patterns of stars in the Milky Way. I used a picture I found online to try to get the shape and approximate density of the stars correct.  For the stripes I used thick, gloss paint to give a sharp contrast between the two areas.

The basic idea was to contrast the notion of a country of 50 states with the reality of a country of millions of people.

Detail