Provenance:
Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago

Exhibited:
Chicago, Illinois, Chicago History Museum, Ed Paschke: Chicago Icon – A Retrospective, September 30 2006-February 19, 2007
Indianapolis, Indiana, Herron Gallery, Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University Purdue University, Ed Paschke Nonplussed: Paintings 1967-2004, March 9-April 29, 2007
Godfrey, Illinois,  Lewis and Clark College, Unfinished Business, September 22-October 19, 2007

Lot Essay:
Sky Blue, 1994, represents Paschke’s moving on from the large celebrity or historical icon portraits of a few years earlier (such as his Elvis and Lincoln).  Here Paschke reinvents a human scale generalized androgynous face overlaid with tattoo-like symbols of little chicks. They may be either dreaded or soothing chicks but they fill the head. (they may refer to his father’s inspiring carvings of birds).  On the upper right a larger chicken without a wattle is neither fully hen nor rooster.  This ambiguity leads us again to Paschke’s paradoxical law of opposites that resist efforts to explain his imagery as a simple narrative.  Paschke employs wide ovals and lines to merge with the painted head. Together they suggest the five senses. Other symbols float nearby. It’s an uncertain private dialogue about personal identity happening in broad daylight. The paint application is more varied in this work, sometimes thick, vigorous; sometimes water thin and dotted, evoking the presence of studio hands-on working and experiment.  Sky Blue shows how Paschke’s commitment to inventive at-the-moment problem solving was guided by his career-long maxim: “Show life in the picture plane.”  

 

William Conger, Artist; Professor Emeritus, Art Theory and Practice,  Northwestern University