Jessie Chaffee (Homage to Alma-Tadema) by Daniel E. Greene

Remarks by Fred Ross, ARC Chairman:

This painting is one of the very best in our collection by any living artist; it is clearly on a par with some of the finest work of the past. I felt a need to express why this work is such a major achievement…. so I wrote the following ..."

"There is a hushed dignity to her on the one hand, set off by an enormous emotional power, pent up yet under rigid control due to the societal setting that we can only imagine must be occurring from her proper seated position while wearing what appears to be a graduation, debutante or wedding dress. Her bemused sideward glance at the viewer while forever trapped in that setting creates one of the strongest focal points I’ve ever seen in most any other painting.

Her eye’s path successfully takes all of the inner strength of personality, and discharges it directly into that part of one’s soul where resides one’s aesthetic and poetic sensibilities, capturing at once her dignity, beauty and energetic spirit. Intelligent, knowing, and perhaps more than a bit mischievous, you sense here is someone who is just loaded with fun, and an intense playful love of life. She is in complete control of herself, but yet so clearly impatient to be set free from her bondage to whichever societal or cultural tradition in which she has been forced temporarily to play a part. She is in fact playing with her hands, reflecting a playful spirit, and perhaps her way of holding at bay all that pent up energy."