Label Text"I'll allow stuff to be unresolved and abstract and
maybe ambivalent. I have a hard time doing some-
thing that is too static, too frozen in a single moment.
I fight that constantly, try to spread it out into a
longer moment maybe. . . . I love color and I want
to seduce (people) into looking at something that
they would ordinarily not want to look at."
James Cobb
Cobb's paintings reflect the way he sees the material world: an illusion that appears always as being alive, energetic, and bustling with vitality. Inspired by the Dutch still life tradition of vanitas paintings — depictions of skulls accompanied by the remains of gluttonous meals finely rendered as symbols of life's temporality — Cobb invented his own still life compositions using a contemporary sensibility. In this example, various varieties of foods (a chicken drumstick, fish and fish bones, vegetables, all topped with large globs of brightly colored gelatin) merge together to form a heap pile of flowing lines and rich sensuous colors, tempting our visual senses the way the smells of a feast appeal to our taste buds. With the food infested with clusters of ants, the imagery is intended more as a metaphoric still life than as a literal representation. Simply put, the painting reminds us how easy it is to be seduced or repelled by appearances.
(David Rubin, Label Text 2007)