Rats! (She's Winning)

February 28, 2011: UPDATE! This painting won the "Best Last In: Jury Award" at Bezpala Brown Gallery. This means it will be re-hung in the show in late March 2011 as well as entered in the overall Latest in Art 2011 competition..

In this painting, we're taken into the interior of a bar, Anyplace in Anytown, on a Saturday night. The "usual suspects" are there: the couple on a date... the buddies having a brew or two... the gangster with his moll... friends and strangers having card games...

"Rats! She's Winning"/oil on canvas

It's all there... except the characters are rats, dressed as humans. I'm not sure why I decided to use rats in this painting but it may have been due to research work I was doing at the time, where I was reading a lot of studies which used rats. As you know, rats are used because certain aspects of their physiology and biochemistry are near identical with ours!

Some people look at this painting and see mice... although I've painted scenes with mice (now in a private collection in Canada), these creatures were modeled on the rats in a Visual Dictionary I have. Based on unfortunately close observation of mice (when a few took up residence in my house back in 2009), the tails and ears on mice do not look like those of rats.

Detail: Upper right corner

But, as every picture tells a story, all interpretations are welcome. Some of the details are lost in the photo; for example, the mugs of beer and ale on the bar, shown in the detail below, are actually painted with the faceted glass and reflections on the glass. You can see such attention-to-detail better when you view the real painting. All being well, this canvas will be on show at the Bezpala Brown Gallery in Toronto in late February.

Detail:Lower left corner

Copyright Deborah C. Sawyer

A view of Rats! in the place of honor

All images copyrighted to the artist