Unfinished Business
In "Ticket to Ride" Michael Bell created a cinematic painting series as a journey through one woman’s harrowing search for redemption, only nothing inspires redemption quite like revenge.
"Unfinished Business" is the sixth of nine large-format mixed-media paintings that range from emotionally-driven portraits as allegories reminiscent of dramatic film-stills to dark, ambiguous hotel room scenes and metropolitan landscapes on 60" X 60" canvases overlaid with mixed-media subway maps painted into the background of each work.
Bell’s narrative strategy is for the viewer to question how much of Ticket to Ride is just a dream, and how much is rooted in reality. Its major movement is the journey taken by an Italian Femme Fetale that begins on a New York City subway platform awaiting her metaphorical “train” and her journey continues -- painting by painting -- like a roller coaster ride through her mind.
In Unfinished Business we're taken to the ominous marshes of the New Jersey Meadowlands where the Italian Femme Fetale from Scenes 1, 4 and 5 and the artist (the Taxi Driver from Scene 5) are seen peering into the trunk of the Taxi at us, the viewer.
