Midnight Picnic 2

Mike Chattem has always been amused with banality and fascinated by the absurd underpinnings of reality. In his paintings, mundane moments are transmuted into illusive scenarios that convey a sense of playful and surreal exploration. Scenes like someone looking at a hallway floor, a picture of a friend in nature, and a midnight picnic are rendered with dense detail and pattern into fragmentary, collage-like tableaus.