The Dare original collage on canvas

Part of The Last Quartets art series, The Dare depicts my vision of the first movement of Beethoven's last string quartet: opus 135 in F. Here we see a squirrel put up to a dare from the three blue squirrels in silhouette in the background. They didn't think their friend was up to the task of stealing honey from the beehive, but they're about to be proved wrong.

My vision for the four collages that make up this Beethoven quartet is that bees represent artists and squirrels represent their fans. The Dare asks us to consider all the ways we steal from one another, and the expectations we have for art to be free. How do artists mix influences for their own work, or in the case of collage, use found images in their work. How might the emergence of artificial intelligence be threatening to steal everyone's intellectual property and jeopardize all our jobs?

This canvas measures 20x20 inches with a 3/4 inch profile with sides painted in metallic gold acrylic. All patterns used in this collage were designed by me and are glued together with my original colored pencil drawings. Comes ready to hang.

You can also find a print of this piece here.