Exhibition Guide

Visual Description

“A Midsummer Afternoon Dream” is a nearly square oil painting on canvas of an adult figure leaning against a bicycle outdoors. The painting measures 106 inches by 101 inches. The figure’s skin tone is rendered in grayscale. The figure wears a straw visor over their wavy hair that falls behind their shoulders. Their short-sleeved cornflower-blue dress loosely follows the contours of their body, down to their shins, and is cinched at the waist with a belt made of the same color fabric used for the body of the dress. The dress’s puffy sleeves are worn off the shoulder. The garment is either in two pieces or tiered at their thigh between its top and bottom. Their white sneakers are partially obscured by long blades of green grass that they stand upon. They lean to their left and rest their braceleted left wrist on the brown handlebars of a pale-yellow bicycle that stands behind them. The bicycle rims and tires are rendered in concentric circles of orange, white and black. Thin silver spokes web the center of the wheels, connecting the wheel to the rims. A small, fluffy, albino Pekingese dog sits in the bicycle’s orange wire basket alongside a bouquet of yellow sunflowers and purple and white daisies. The figure’s skirt and the dog’s fur flow slightly to the left of the image, suggesting a light breeze. The bouquet’s sunflowers mirror those that extend along the background, growing in a row behind a white picket fence. A white house with a brown roof and a red brick chimney is visible in the distance on the right side of the painting. Just like the sunflowers behind them, the figure stands tall in front of a vast overcast sky with peeks of blue.