William Hasley, Game, 1983

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Multicolored canvas with various letters and symbols etched in the foreground—including, lines and crosshatching, x's, o's, w's and a backward "d." 

Narrative: Charleston Native William Halsey was a modernist painter whose works were as much about subject as they were about the act of painting. He often laid his canvas on the ground allowing him to move more freely. On his piece Game he states “Painting is instinct, experiment, accident, chance — a game”  

In his own words: “Game for Three was the result of an empty lot in a slummy section of Charleston. I passed the lot often. In the summer it was hot, dry, and full of weeds and trash. Children played there; they played with total absorption, obliviously squatting in the dirt. The game could have been marbles; it could have been tic-tac-toe or just drawing in the dirt.

Game for Three is not, however, a social statement; it is a statement about any child anywhere, playing any game. Beyond that it is a painting concerned with color, shapes, with positive and negative space. It means whatever the viewers see in it and want it to mean.”