Time Out

Steven Curtis's gem shows again that a picture paints a thousand words. The little lad's body posture says it all.

Emotional and beautifully detailed, Steven Curtis’s Time Out is a profoundly human painting that portrays solitude and punishment. Isolation is one of the primary tools of discipline in our society. When we misbehave as children, we are made to sit by ourselves and, in theory, reflect on our poor behavior. In practice, I think the “time out” primarily functions as a warning that if we cannot act in a way deemed acceptable by society, we will be cast out of it. This form of discipline carries into adulthood, where misconduct is penalized by the solitude of prison, and further misconduct is punished by an even more isolated prison cell. The bleakness of Time Out’s palette and the dejected hanging head of the child acutely recall these first initiations into punitive banishment.