The Capitol Dome

like it because it's big and has a lot of things in it that amuse me. It took a long time and the longer you take on things, the more time there is to . . . I mean, some great art work is cre- ated very quickly. But it tends to be more like the cover of a newspaper: it can be immediately arresting, but it's not much for long-term reflection. The things that we want to look at for a long period, often took a long time to make. It takes a long period of time to sort out and decode what the maker thought and did, and how it was done, and all the rest. . . . WdG: And the JQA does that for you. Well, there is a lot going on: there's architecture, weather, animals, human activity . . . . PW: There's a good story. WdG: This isn't something I thought of before, but is there a way for artists of historical paintings to make sure . . . I mean, do you create a "caption," a discursive caption, for ev- ery painting you do, in case people don't know what they are looking at? PW: It depends on the painting but, yes, writing has an important part in art. Now, for a painting, one of my tests [for] if it's art is, if it was found on the street, would it be recog- nized as art, would someone pick it up? There was a famous case in Oakland, New Zealand, where I am from, where an art collection was stolen and much of it laid on the street and was thrown away. Someone recognized something and got it, but much of the art had lain on the street for some period. In 1000 years no one will be interested in what was written [as a cap- tion]. The writing will disappear. Art must survive entirely on its own strength. So even if you don't know it's John Quincy Adams and the White House, the beauty and skill of the work, I hope, will keep it saved from the bin. But certainly if you are doing a history painting, people will read and believe what they read before they look and believe what they see. So you have to give them something to read. WdG: When I'm in an art museum, I notice that the first thing people do is go up and look at the caption. PW: And that has an advantage, because it gets them up close to the painting. And they're more likely to look into the paint- ing. Because a lot of people don't use their eyes very success- fully or very skillfully. It's like swiping through things on your phone: "like that…don't like that…like that…don't like that… ." There's such a plethora of images. WdG: What would you still want to paint about the Capitol? PW: Oh, there are so many things I haven't touched on. I am extremely interested in construction, in how things are built, and building, both for itself and also as a metaphor. Every- thing that's connected with the Capitol is so intimately . . . it's the physical expression. I mean, I think that if George Wash- ington . . . he fought the [Revolutionary] war and created the United States. He really created the documents that got us going, or was central to them, and he created the Federal City and most importantly the Capitol itself. He stopped work on the White House in order to work on the Capitol. So we know the Capitol was the most important thing. So it has almost magical significance to me. And there's so many early parts of the Capitol I really haven't touched on: the Latrobe staircase, I started to fiddle with . . . the Brumidi corridors are worth recording, although they're kind of recorded in themselves. I mean, there's just so many great spaces in the Capitol. WdG: What's your favorite space in the Capitol? PW: The Marble Room is very good. I'm particularly fond of it. . . . There's quite a few offices and utilitarian spaces. One of the most interesting spaces is the old baths—baths that Sena- tors used to use, giant marble baths—still there in the base- ment. WdG: Are you waiting at this point for commissions for these works, or would you do them on your own? Is there a market for them? THE MARBLE ROOM: AN EVENING'S WORK (1871), 48" x 48" oil on canvas I loved Sen. Robert Byrd's story of the Senate pages shooing bats out of the Marble Room before they could invade the Senate Cham- ber. The boyish antics in this grand columned space seemed em- blematic of life in the early Capitol. 39 THE CAPITOL DOME

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