Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Sardo Numspar]

 

Some of my own early B&W illustration trending toward dragons, demons and a man eating daffodil (titled Humanitarian)...

 

 

Fantastic additions to this thread!!! I love this piece.

[Flex Mentallo]

Alanna always intended us to share our own experiences, influences and interests in this thread

 

 

Welcome aboard Cat! Wonderful stuff so far!

 

(If anyone else would care to post whatever they might like to share, that would be great as well.)

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I'll save chroma influences for another post.

 

I look forward to that!

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I did meet Reed Crandall, and got to know Berni Wrightson and Al Williamson

 

I for one would absolutely love to hear more about these three artists - they were among my boyhood heroes!

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Hopper's style is one of the most often appropriated in the art world. Anytime I go to an art exhibit there are at least 2 artists portraying urban alienation and/or decay in his way. His use of broad strokes is easy to copy, never with his success, of course.

 

 

 

His iconography has entered the collective unconscious of our culture. So I tend to prefer his less celebrated works.

 

 

His painterly technique is not that hard to imitate, but that belies his originality.

 

On reflection, I realise that he had quite a lot of influence on me during my student days. I think however the alienation in so much of my work was there all along.

 

 

Alienation - in particular, a difficult childhood in a broken home, an alcoholic and abusive father - and most hauntingly for me, watching helplessly as my two youngest sisters, ten years my junior, lost their mother at around 7 years of age.

 

Predictably, emotional abuse from a very young age shaped the adults they woud become - and while they both survived, the difficult journey they were forced to take towards adult life in some respects bypassed a proper childhood.

 

After I left home to attend college - not realising I'd never come home except for brief visits on holidays - they largely managed the household.

 

 

 

They are probably the chief motivation in choosing to work for the past 18 years in the field of mental health. I am still trying to rescue them.

 

Here is a gallery of smaller studies spanning 20 years. They may be viewed as a series of ghost stories. My dead are included, but in some cases, it is the living who are depicted - revenants of persistent memories perhaps.

 

 

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Recurring themes and motifs include shadows, mirrors, dreams, nightmares, miracles and visions, reflections and water. Corridors are tunnels into the past. A young girl hides in a wardrobe watching her mother stare into a mirror. In another image, she tries on her mother's wedding veil - or has it become a shroud? Dusty corridors store dust covered museum pieces - which are in fact veiled family portraits. A blithe young man crosses water, using the heads of floating children as stepping stones. Nirmal embarks in a dugout carrying the body of murdered Mohan - his son in all but name. People's reflections persist in the slow glass of mirrors long after the reflection was cast.. And so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2013 by alanna

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[Pat Calhoun]

WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Cat-Man_America]

 

I'll save chroma influences for another post.

 

I look forward to that!

 

[font:Times New Roman]OK, here goes:

 

Even before my university art school daze, I was impressed by the realism of Dutch masters (Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch, especially Vermeer), the bizarre portraits of faces within objects created by Giuseppe Arcimboldo and the vibrant interpretation of French impressionists such as Manet & Pisarro and post-impressionists like Seurat.

 

Surrealism and speculative SF is where my own speculations would finally focus, but more on that later. Alas, I've never warmed to more abstract explorations even though appreciating the imaginative efforts of contemporary artists to break down compositions into their most primal, basic elements.

 

Johannes Vermeer...

 

 

 

 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo...

 

 

 

 

 

Eduard Manet...

 

 

Camille Pisarro...

 

 

George Seurat (pointillism)

 

 

Next, the inspiration of science fiction & fantasy...

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Edited January 5, 2013 by DavidMerryweather