Shaker Chair and Quilt, 1988, Encaustic and collage on paper, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, museum purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund

Audio Description

Shaker Chair and Quilt from 1988 is encaustic and collage on paper. It is in the collection of Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. It was a museum purchase using the George Otis Hamlin Fund.

This is a vertical abstract painting on paper called Shaker Chair and Quilt. Driskell used a mixture of collage and a wax-based medium called encaustic. In the foreground, there are two vertical posts in dense mixtures of colors, with several horizontal streaks painted in yellow, white, and green, respectively. This is reminiscent of the back support of a wooden Shaker chair. Within that structure are angular shapes featuring brightly colored patterns, some with lines and others with loose or incomplete circles. Behind that is a series of horizontal bands of color that run the length of the paper. They alternate almost randomly in color from white to red to blue, some featuring diagonal line patterns. But there are also accents of orange, pink, and green throughout the background. There is a loose green and blue outline around the painting’s perimeter on the top, bottom, and left edges, which could be the edges of the Shaker quilt. The artist’s signature, “Driskell 88”, includes the year it was painted and is added in white paint in the bottom left corner.

Label Copy

Shaker Chair and Quilt from 1988 is encaustic and collage on paper. It is in the collection of Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. It was a museum purchase using the George Otis Hamlin Fund.

Encaustic is a wax-based medium that can be challenging to use. It provided Driskell an excellent binder for such textured collage materials, such as torn strips of painted paper, while also creating the effect of transparency. When burnished, the melted wax provides a surface that is brilliant and luminous, creating depth wherein the collage elements seem to dance. Shaker Chair and Quilt recalls his mother’s quilting and refers to his deep admiration for Shaker artisans and their furnishings. Driskell frequently visited Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine, not far his Falmouth home.

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