Shasta Tagged; a Painting on Canvas [title supplied] a collaborative effort [tagger's sub-title]

Smith, Evelyn, pinxit; with tag by Raven Mahone

no cities, California: [personal artifact], 1970-71. 10x14 inch canvas panel on pine stretcher, acryllic (we think), amateur work showing a distant view looking eastward of the Shasta-Shastina massif, forests and dry slopes in foreground. Thriftstore kitsch twiddled by another and younger artist, which now bears, superimposed, an image-conformable "name-tag" consisting of a bead of pigment accompanied by suitable brush-shading that integrates tag with original image: an aesthetically-satisfying defacement. Signed multiple times recto and verso, details below. Upper right-hand corner has been drilled through and through, with an eighth-inch shaft and quarter-inch countersunk depression. Pigment, canvas and wood are in very good condition.

This Shasta image is not a paint-by-numbers item, but likely a copy from a calendar photo. On the stretcher is pencilled, "Painted by Evelyn Smith (niece to Lattie Grunsky from [illegible])... Painted about 1970-71". Over-printed in black crayon in a different and more youthful hand, "raven mahone". Recto bears three attributions: a small illegible signature in lower right, an Asian-seal impression in blood-orange lower left, and the tag itself. We believe we met the graffiti artist manning a garage sale with friend; while he went off to change the paltry twenty we proffered, she contributed our information that the tagger characterized the work as "a collaborative effort."

Cat.No: 171659

Price: $200.00