Rene Magritte famously said “Everything we see hides another thing”. I’m not so sure that everything hides another thing but I do think all things can have multiple meanings and layers of intrigue. Perhaps Magritte and I could argue the toss about that, but either way I think we’d come to an agreement that nothing is ever quite as it seems.

During 1947-48 Magritte supported himself by producing fake Picassos, Braques and de Chiricos later he forged banknotes. In his defence I can admit to replacing broken tiles in a bathroom with realistic painted canvas boards cut to size to sell an apartment in Collingwood. We do what we have to do. When you utilise your skills as a survival mechanism in difficult times you come out the other side with a greater knowledge of what you want to create for yourself when times are better.

In this painting I’ve included Magritte’s bowler that he featured in over 50 paintings between 1926 and 1966. It’s an object of ordinariness, a costume, perhaps something to hide under as demonstrated in the Thomas Crown Affair when the museum became full of bowler hatted gents and the criminal dissolved into the sea of ordinary men.

In this painting I’ve placed a set of scales on top of the bowler hat with a red apple on each plate. The added objects and strings creating a perfect balance. The apples reference the giant green apple in Magritte’s “The Listening Room” were he plays with scale. And here we have scales called “The Hearing Room”. Plays upon plays. Things not hiding but revealed one upon the other.