"Named after Derrick Bell, bull"
To embody Harvard law professor and race scholar Derrick Bell, Javens has chosen a bull whose stoic, immovable posture - comparable to the intractable character of the law - is rendered in an epic 100-by-147-inch portrait on muslin.
In formats both epic and intimate, Javens renders the animal world with a majestic, haunting mystery. Her paintings are romantic, endowing cows and horses, crows and bison with the kind of dignity normally reserved for human portraiture or the bas-relief presidential profile on a coin.
Oil paint on unstretched theater muslin. The monumentally scaled work is equally properly presented pinned to the wall as is, or stretched and framed.