The Splice of Life David Humphrey at McKee by Christopher Chambers as published in dArt International, Fall 2000 David Humphrey's new paintings remind me of a spoof on Star Trek that I read in Mad magazine when I was a kid. The opening panel depicted Captain Kirk et al in the transporter room. They had just beamed back aboard the Enterprise, but things had gotten skewed in transport. Spock's leg was sticking out of Captain Kirk's ear, and Dr. McCoy's arm protruded from Ohuru's navel. You get the picture. Co-Occurring Conditions is a dreamy, amorous scene. An enraptured male face alongside two pink flowers growing out of the nearby grass gazes lovingly at the ravenous female lover above him eagerly getting down to business. The background is an amorphous, languid, light blue abstraction that drifts and twinkles like lights exploding in your head before and during orgasm. A few foreign elements are introduced into the composition: a kitsch porcelain cat on the windowsill, an emblematic daisy. They serve as footnotes and punctuation, incongruous additions that add humor and intimacy to the painting. All the work takes lovemaking as its subject-lovemaking as opposed to merely sex. The figures swoon in soft embrace. They float in pleasure. Waders is a painting of a man and woman morphing in and out of each other, back and forth and up and down like Cubism on ecstacy while tooling through swirling psychedelic waters. Their Caucasian flesh (since all the people are Caucasian) is exposed but for flat black shoes and panties provocatively showing above a bit of skirt. Chandelier comprises a man's head wearing yellow sunglasses, a chandelier bedecked with flora, and a light blue vignette that features a woman undressing. Humphrey's work is appealing and intelligent. His method of constructing a pictorial narrative is reminiscent of Francis Picabia's legendary Surrealist efforts. Generally, a linear rendering of nude figures in the throes of "it" is the topmost level of image, spliced together in a way also akin to David Salle, who in turn may have taken the cue from James Rosenquist. This approach to picture making has been done to death by legions of fine artists throughout the 1980s and '90s. Illustration, the more pragmatic cousin to visual high-mindedness, has always utilized vignettes and overlays by the score in everything from circus posters to book covers to scientific diagrams. Humphrey effectively assembles bits of magical innuendos and their gestalt that envelop the viewer in a timeless moment of place. Nowadays, with computer graphics afoot in every province, you can't get away from image splicing. An artist as talented and visionary as David Humphrey may want to consider moving on. He clearly has the skill to do what he wishes. illustration, David Humphrey, Carefree Attitudes, Inc., 1999, oil on canvas, 54 x 44".