The Guitar series of still-lifes represents my admiration for and attempts at emulating the works of Picasso and Matisse, especially as shown in the recent exhibition at MOMA in New York. These men could be said to have removed the "fourth wall" of paintings, much as modern playwrights did in theater. But for these masters, the fourth wall was the back, not the front, of our viewing space. Their discoveries helped me to experiment with opening the negative space of my still-lifes with elements that deepen and flatten the pictorial scene without resort to realist representation of perspective. September, 2003