The Lady With Red Gloves

This is dope. Is it collage or a painting or drawing of a collage? It certainly is what it is.

Alan M Richards’ The Lady With Red Gloves is a breathtakingly detailed surrealist work on paper. The richness and exactitude of Richards’ pen work—seen most prominently in the orange breast and grey wings of the sparrows, the mirrors charmingly garish frame, the folds and seams of the headless woman's coat, and the skeletal limbs of the winter-worn trees—is starkly highlighted by the monotone expanse of white snow (I'm not sure if this is the plain paper or a layer of white ink). The highly figurative appearance of the painting is almost wrapped in a blanket of single-toned abstraction that makes the undeniably masterful detailing even more apparent. What’s nice about surrealism is that it not only sometimes doesn’t need to be explained but doesn’t even allow for explanation in the first place. As Richards notes, “It is what it is…” and The Lady With Red Gloves is an artwork that will never cease to mystify and satisfy.