Collaborations > Playing Bodies
Playing Bodies came about as a collaboration between husband-and-wife team Bob Perelman and Francie Shaw. Shaw had created the paintings for an earlier exhibition, and then Perelman added poems to accompany them.
The paintings are from a series Shaw originally titled “Dinos,” in which the blue on white coloring is specifically meant to recall Delft tiles. In Shaw's words, “The paintings are metaphorical in that each gesture or pose suggests an often contradictory variety of emotional meanings. The relationship displayed can be read as between two figures or between different parts of oneself. At the same time they are clearly paintings of toys.”