A little road trip

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door" Emily Dickinson.

Often it feels like sources of inspiration come from anywhere and everywhere but whilst on one hand they feel random, the images that move me most often link in to each other forming little road-trips into a larger journey of investigation. 

A still from Tideland  -  image uploaded from Allmoviephoto.com

'Tideland'(Terry Gilliam, 2005)- The opening scenes depict the main character, an enchanting child Jeliza Rose, cooking up heroin for her addict parents - rarely can I watch this film as a whole and often fast forward through various sections but'Tideland' is a visual feast and one in which I found references and connections to some of my favourite artists.

Image uploaded from Moma.org

The painting 'Christina's World' (1948) by Andrew Wyeth is for me one of the most arresting images from the last century. It's filled with emotional intensity created by the vast sense of open space and the ambiguity of the figure 'Christina'. This painting inspired Mitch Cullin who wrote the novel'Tideland'.

 'House from the Railroad' (1925) uploaded from Wikipaintings.org

Echoes of the house from Hitchcock's 'Psycho'(1960) appear in 'Tideland' but Hitchcock was directly inspired by the painting above - 'House from the Railroad' by Edward Hopper. 

Still from 'Psycho' uploaded from Planetvideo.com.au

Hopper's paintings of figures are rarely of close-ups causing the viewer to be psychologically distanced. His paintings are like film sets with a sense of space and emptiness. Director Todd Haynes translates these characteristics into his film 'Safe' (1995) below.

Todd Haynes 'Safe' image uploaded from www.jonathanrosenbaum.com

Gregory Crewdson photographs are of a cinematic scale and depict American small town scenes with slightly sinsister and ambiguous narratives. He is influenced by film-makers Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Todd Haynes.

Gregory Crewdson from 'Twilight' series - uploaded from artsytime.com