Max Warfield

X-Ray Painting Max Warfield

Cameras can be used to record, enhance, or distort. In Washington state during the '70s, an artist uses his to reveal the inner soul of those around him, until a vengeful relative comes calling for his. Sterling's topics were many, like peeling back layers of his inner mind using x-ray vision. There were buildings-once stately in their day, but now sporting boarded up windows shedding chips of paint. Other images depicted job-giving factories, focusing on their blackened smokestacks; a freshly waxed Buick Toronado, muscular with Crager wheels, yet covered in bird droppings; homeless figures by orchestra concert halls and beer bottles before bank doorways. They were simple, yet intellectual, sometimes intentionally blurred or filtered-yet bold and presenting alarming clarity. They were scientific and whimsical, tessellated the painful while focusing on what gives hope. They were him. Her vision for him was not only different, but opposite; and her tolerance for sin was slim, forcing action. What she didn't realize was how distorted the truth could become, as if viewed through one of his filters, developed with tricky methods.