painting and sculpture techniques and artists. Work Tansey's paintings normally depict everyday or historical occurrences, though they typically reveal certain oddities under closer scrutinization. He argues that representation has other functions rather than "capturing the real." He argues that his work is about "how different realities interact with each other." One of Tansey's most potent pieces from this early period is The Last Judgement (1971), which he created from oil on masonite. He was inspired by Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel and proceeded to reproduce it in 32 rectangular sections. These were placed on display, arranged four across and eight tall. The entire study was done in shades of grey and brown. For Tansey, this project was "a synthesis of photographic, illustrative, and painterly qualities… The meaning of the work resided in the process of re-translation- reinterpretation reproduction- rather than in its perceptual equivalence to reality." In producing this piece, Tansey "discovered the notion of the 'unlimited brush'- any object able to carry paint could function as a brush… touch was equivalent to light… scraping off the paint let the white ground show through." This technique becomes the basis for many of his later paintings. In this stepwise process, the overwhelming and complex fresco that Tansey saw in the Sistine Chapel was broken down into a methodological and grid-like cacophony of figures. At first glance, Tansey's distinctive paintings appear to depict straight narrative scenes but closer scrutiny reveals an undercurrent of quirks and visual puns. By thus manipulating the conventions and structures of figurative painting, he creates corollaries for literary, philosophical, and historical concepts in visual allegories about the nature and implications of perception, meaning, and interpretation in art. His work is in major collections including Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles; and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Museum in Basel (1990); "Mark Tansey: Art and Source", Seattle Art Museum, in Washington (1990, traveled to Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada, St. Louis Art Museum in Missouri, Walker Art Center, List Visual Art Center, MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas through 1991); Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, New York (2005) and Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2005, traveled to Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany). His 1984 painting Action Painting II hangs in