FLYPAPER

1991, Miami Beach

Acrylic on canvas 48 x 60 inches
Collection Andrew Tobias, Miami , 1992

Related print: Flypaper poster and limited edition

Story:
It is the first painting of mine which was published as a limited print and poster. It was also one of my first paintings on canvas. In 1991, While the piece was still displayed in my gallery in Miami Beach, people would congregate around it. This fascinated the mayor to be Mr. Gelber who was on a hand shaking tour, commenting; "Those people are like flies stuck to fly paper". I thought this to be an appropriate title for my painting.

Press article Capitalist with a heart

Please read what Jim Tommaney wrote about it in the original text written for the greeting card version:

Fly Paper Copyright 1991

This extraordinary image ricochets within our minds like a loose cannon aboard a ship. Seductive in it's simplicity, it indicates that the pull of money rivals gravity in it's power. It suggests that greed can fill a personal horizon, as the image fills the painting. It hints of a lunar god of currency as composed and sedate as any other god.

The image resonates of alien dominance, of the implacability of fate, of the ebb and flow of fortunes, of submission to obsession. There is the faint echo of possible benevolence in the neutrality of the image, looming large to all rather than seeking a single sacrificial victim.

If the image flickers into that of a spaceship, will it take prisoners? To what planet will it sail, fueled by self-generating finances? Will it disappear one day, as mysteriously as it arrived, leaving the enigma to historians?

Or is it a metaphor for America, its ripe fullness to be followed by descent into crescent silver, as our currency and our lives are devalued. The paintings make no judgment.

Pierre Marcel's objectivity records things as he sees them, with no need for elaboration. The soul of the viewer, as it's irresistibly enticed into the picture, must and does bring its own reference points.

Jim Tommaney, 1992