The Morning Paper

The Morning Paper, a self-portrait, is representative of Herman Maril’s quiet interiors and landscapes in which the artist’s fascination with the articulation of space through color is evident. In this charming composition, Maril represents himself seated in a rocking chair without articulated facial features. Meanwhile, the still life on the red table in the foreground pops against the expanse of gray that unifies the three-part composition, dominating the canvas and suggesting that the act of painting is the subject. Maril describes his art, which merges figuration and abstraction, as an exploration of space and color: “My preoccupation in painting has always been space. . . I like to deal with big open spaces. And color. Color and space is painting.”