Random thoughts...(or my head feels like a Cy Twombly painting)

Been in and out of the 'zone' these last couple of days - which sometimes feels like a precarious place to be - one moment 'eureka!' and you just get 'it', the next amnesia....what was all that fuss about? Who knows, but it's all part of the privilege of being an artist I think.

Cy Twombly - Hero and Leanda (1985) image uploaded from Pinterest - original source unknown.

If I could paint the inside of my head on a good day I would like to think it would look like this Cy Twombly painting. Will upload some work-in-progress soon...happy weekend, A x

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

  

Painting Updates - Paper Doll Series

Progress on the painting front has been slow lately but my struggle with acrylics has continued and here are my first few attempts at some hand-painted patterns;

Playing around with vintage colour schemes

After hours of intricately cutting and piecing together - one almost-finished Paper Doll;