Sunday, February 27, 2011

Does My Red Kiss Conceal an Atom Bomb?


Actually I’ve been immersed all day working on two entirely different abstract paintings. So, Red Kiss (above) was actually painted on Friday but such a chaotic chronology seems quite apt at a time when an extra couple of cybernetic arms(nuclear powered of course) would be a very welcome attribute!

So, Why Red Kiss?
This was another case of starting out with one idea and ending up (in a sort of round about way) with something quite different. I was thinking skies…something gestural with sweeping strata’s of cloud line. Yes, blues and bites of simmering yellow…bla, bla

But it all went a little


Umm… haywire? Off kilter perhaps!

Such accidents are the grist to the creative mill. My husband happened to stroll in as I was in mid flow and remarked that my efforts thus far resembled the atom bomb test just before the mushroom cloud had formed!! (Well thank you David for so acute an observation..Grrrrr!) Still we artist’s do long to make our mark and if not perhaps a nuclear blast then at least a reasonable splash!

But actually I did kind of like the A-bomb reference. It lent the project a certain gravitas perhaps found lacking in my original, and now it seemed, all too ordinary sky idea. Another sweep, a smear and the dab of a damp rag and it seemed a kiss had appeared. Most definitely an open mouth, a captured impression. Like lipstick pressed against a handkerchief?

When I was a child I used to lay in the park, look up at the sky and watch for hours as the clouds played their eternal game of change and shape shift. And I would form pictures out of those countless wisps and ever changing shapes; tapping into that eternal reservoir of unlimited potential. So, like wise as painters we so often find our ideas from simply gazing into the yonder of our imagination.

Catch you later
Shirley

Read more...

0 comments: