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- Kristin Gebhardt, MONA ARTreach Coordinator —
- "Avarice, a term meaning “extreme greed,” comes from the Latin verb avere, meaning “to desire.” This horizontally-oriented artwork is an acrylic painting on board measuring 45 inches across and 27 inches tall – excluding the wooden shadowbox-type frame. The painting features an interior scene viewed from the perspective of someone looking upward. A cat on the mantle and a bird in its cage are included in the scene.
Peter Walkley attended the Omaha Art School, and has participated in a number of Midwestern exhibitions during his art career."
- Tracy Hoffman, Art Historian —
- "Set from an extremely low vantage point, Peter Walkley's Avarice is an excellent
example of the artist's ability to capture the disquiet behind the familiar. A plump
housecat, who obviously doesn't need an extra meal, waits on the mantle, eyeing a wary
bird trapped in his cage. The pristine technical execution of the photorealistic painting
mimics the eerie environment Walkley has staged. Soft light coming through the curtains
seems to be the only movement in the scene, except for the chirps one can imagine issuing
from the mouth of the nervous bird. The piece evokes Walkley's desire to 'find the beauty
and mystery in the everyday, the tensions beneath the serene, while avoiding false
sentiment or cliche.'"
- Russell Lee Hansen, Photographer —
- "This cat wants this bird and if he could get him, he’d chew him up and spit
him out. That’s real avarice.
I like the dramatic low angle in which it’s
created. This adds drama and excitement to the image. Using an everyday scene for this
artwork is very refreshing. Excellent attention to detail. Great use of light and shadow
– it’s very difficult to get good colors in subdued light. The painting of
the house over the fireplace and the black and white images show art on the walls of a
home and expresses art within art. In one black and white, you see a shadow on the mat
from the ball over the man’s face – very three dimensional. The skunky painting
above the fireplace is amusing in this very high quality work."
- Kendra Veirs, guest writer —
- "When I first looked at this picture, I thought it was a photograph,
rather than a painting. It is really realistic and modern looking. It is neat how the
artist took an average house scene and composed it in a unique way. One of the unique
features is the dots over the faces of the left portrait on the wall; however, the
one dot seems to be mid-air. The artist did a good job at depicting the light and
shadows through the window. It is very interesting that out of all the different
situations an artist could capture, he chose a cat watching a bird cage. However,
I thought the cat and bird cage would be the center of the painting, but the angle
it is drawn is different with the cat and birdcage being towards the top of the
painting."
- Savanah Weinman, age 8 —
- "In the picture there's a beautiful bird. There's a cat standing on the
mantle. There's a picture of a yellow house and two clocks. There are bricks that the
cat is sitting on. The bird is in the cage and the cat is looking at it. There's a
window with white curtains. There's a yellowish, whitish wall. There's two houses in
the picture.
It seems strange to have cats and birds in a museum.
If someone was taking a picture of
this painting, they would be sitting on the floor. I have a cat that looks like this. Her
name is Clover. If I had a bird, I'd want a talking parrot that could say, 'Hello, I'm
your friend...can you take me with you?' He would sit on my arm and go for a ride. There's
a bear on my fireplace that my dad killed.
The cat is greedy. He wants to eat the bird. The bird has some toys. I think the cat
wants to play with those toys.
If I had to be the bird or the cat, I'd be the cat...if I wasn't, I'd get beat up.
If I was the bird, I'd probably be scared to get chewed up."
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