Last week I had a wonderful photoshoot with my eldest daughter. It was unplanned and had to happen within 40 mins on a cold and windy winter afternoon. After persuading my daughter to be my model and muse, we quickly got her dressed and all I could grab was some wool, pieces of fabric and 2 frames that happened to be in reach. I had no idea what we were going to do with the props but I was desperate for photo’s that would inspire me and the vision had been unfolding in my mind over the last couple of weeks.
The ideas that was brewing (as explained in my PPP), was to start the journey towards finding ‘Home’ within. The natural landscape/nature, to me, is where I find silence. It is when I walk or run in nature that I connect with a place within and can access that place without the distractions of modern life. I have a personal desire to search for silence and a place within where I am ONLY able to hear one voice – a voice that reveals true self-identity without the interruptions and distracting voices of busyness, technology and social media that try to influence my personal identity. Nature in my artwork will serve as ‘the inner landscape’. In other words, the natural landscape will be a metaphor for my soul realm and the figure/s depicted in that landscape is the self journeying, searching, observing. In an attempt to recover mental resilience and health for myself (and hopefully others), I also plan to sit within nature and do some micro-zoomed small scale paintings of the textures and shapes found in nature and even the insect/animal life to be found there. This will be a meditative practice focussed on the PROCESS of art making. The act and not the product will be in focus.
On with the photoshoot…
As we approached the windy pine forest behind my house I felt intuitively that we needed to find a place in the wood that resembled a shelter. I knew that children often build shelters made of tree trunks and branches and was hoping to find one that was visually pleasing. We didn’t find any of that but what we stumbled upon was a big root system of a tree that had fallen in last years strong winds. It was a very large root system that I felt could serve as the ‘shelter’ I was looking for. We took some photo’s there as well as some with the frames at a different location. At the time I didn’t fully know what the poses and compositions meant but after looking through them later, I was VERY surprised at how I was drawn to certain photo’s and how their meaning started to emerge. I think the full meaning might only emerge when I start to paint and spend time with them.
Here are some of the photo’s that I was drawn to the most. The first set shown below resonated with me and I combined them. I will be either drawing or painting them on my prepared surfaces. I felt that they captured a figure looking back one last time after leaving on her journey inward:
The following is perhaps my favorite and I plan to draw this one using charcoal onto a large 1m diameter circular form surface:
Another sequence that I will still be editing and manipulating (before I decide to draw or paint it) is shown below. The poses happened very intuitively and afterwards I felt that they could almost refer to a breaking out of a ‘frame of mind’ or gaining breakthrough (similar to the breakthrough I have needed the last couple of weeks with creative block!):
‘Frame of mind’?
I am looking forward to work with these a in photoshop and perhaps add some more composites to add interest and symbolism before I draw them up.
In my following post (hopefully uploaded tomorrow), I will have one or two of these drawn up on my panels. I look forward to discuss more ideas with my tutor tomorrow during our tutorial session.
The start of a painting based on one of these photo’s edited in photoshop:
Oil on paper
