Now I Shall Be More Blameless
Artist
Michael Ehle
MediumGouache on ricepaper
Dimensions36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineSeattle City Light 1% for Art Portable Works Collection
Michael Ehle's work chronicled his reaction to the tragedy of AIDS as he fought the illness for ten years. He combined this with subjects from parables and his own esthetic convictions. In 1987 he said, Hopefully each viewer will be able to glean something from my efforts. I'm holding up the mirror for everyone, but never without having viewed myself in it first. The Greg Kucera Gallery comments …Equally riveting are Ehle's own stories created from a mind steeped in art historical traditions and classical references. As he mixed and matched his contemporary images with moral fables his paintings take on a depth of meaning which bears up to repeated viewings.
"Hopefully each viewer will be able to glean something from my efforts. I'm holding up the mirror for everyone, but never without having viewed myself in it first."
- Michael Ehle, 1987
Paintings from the Estate of
Michael Ehle (1953 - 1999)
Life and Death
In the last days of 1999, Michael Ehle died of AIDS at the Bailey-Boushay House in Seattle. His death followed a lengthy series of AIDS related illnesses lasting well over a decade. Michael became aware of AIDS in the early 1980s as all of us did. He was made aware of his own HIV-positive status shortly thereafter. By the mid-1980s Ehle's work began to reflect his growing awareness of the tragedy that this epidemic would wreak on our culture. Even in his first show with the Greg Kucera Gallery in 1985, Ehle began to chronicle his feelings about AIDS with works such as Endangered Species, depicting a trio of exotically dressed men with intertwined limbs. A small rooster is balanced on the finger of one man, perhaps signaling a wake-up call or referencing the preening quality of the subjects.
"Hopefully each viewer will be able to glean something from my efforts. I'm holding up the mirror for everyone, but never without having viewed myself in it first."
- Michael Ehle, 1987
Paintings from the Estate of
Michael Ehle (1953 - 1999)
Life and Death
In the last days of 1999, Michael Ehle died of AIDS at the Bailey-Boushay House in Seattle. His death followed a lengthy series of AIDS related illnesses lasting well over a decade. Michael became aware of AIDS in the early 1980s as all of us did. He was made aware of his own HIV-positive status shortly thereafter. By the mid-1980s Ehle's work began to reflect his growing awareness of the tragedy that this epidemic would wreak on our culture. Even in his first show with the Greg Kucera Gallery in 1985, Ehle began to chronicle his feelings about AIDS with works such as Endangered Species, depicting a trio of exotically dressed men with intertwined limbs. A small rooster is balanced on the finger of one man, perhaps signaling a wake-up call or referencing the preening quality of the subjects.
