New Artwork: Private Enterprise

I began this painting while at Takt Berlin, but I wasn’t able to finish it there so I completed it this fall. Its substrate is another purchase from Latgale Tirgus in Riga, Latvia (the same flea market where I purchased the preprinted 1980s wall-newspaper “Combat Sheet” which serves as the substrate for Loafing).

Unlike earlier works on ephemera from occupied territories, this piece uses stationery straight from the Soviet core: the USSR Ministry of Fisheries. I once again painted the Baltic Sea (its third appearance in this series!), with a black-headed gull eating an unauthorized catch on top of the bisected bureaucratic emblem.

This is Private Enterprise, acrylic on USSR Ministry of Fisheries stationery from the 1970’s, 11.38x8.2”, 2026.

Shelby Prindaville's painting of a gull eating fish atop USSR Ministry of Fisheries stationery from the 1970's