The Pickers

Lee Purcell

A pioneer of the screenprint as a fine art form - a serigraph - Lee Purcell layered color and shapes within the screen as a painter would on canvas, using inks that might be translucent to allow the underlying color to come through, and producing myriad textures with a variety of tools applied to the screen.

Here, the ideologies of mid century Modernism and Classical themes come together to create a scene of idyl and contemporary homesteading. Millet’s “The Gleaners” might come to mind in this image of neighbors gathering the fruits of their labor in a field, which abuts rowhouses and brick storefronts. The figures are rendered in loose line forms, a la Cezanne, while the bulk of the composition is made up of bold, angular shapes brightened by patterns in vivid colors inspired by the burgeoning Abstract scene of the 1950s. Purcell assures that the story is always open to interpretation.