Lair of the Nasty Brown God 2007
Lair of the Nasty Brown God (revised 2009)I think those floated orbs in the prior version reflected my need to identify these firmly in a certain contemporary camp. It felt very good to remove them, and to let that central shape just go ahead and be pile o' poo-ish.
3 comments:
You're so open with your intentions. It's great.
This transformation goes from slightly too contrived, to a convincing world. A wonderfully strange and fantastical yet convincing world.
I wish I could invent worlds like this. That's an understatement.
Can you pull these creatures all from your head? The swans, for instance, are they fully formed in your head, or do you look at some reference? No need to give away trade secrets if you'd rather not, but since you already confessed that the orbs were a conceit, I thought you might not mind the question.
The new shape of the pile is extremely satisfying. And what I find maybe most impressive is that you combine these more traditionally beautiful elements with the more visceral ones without it ever becoming a "gotcha" kind of picture, if you know what I mean. I don't feel manipulated or tricked.
And the color. There is so much color in this seemingly limited palette. I would love to see this in life. One day . . .
Great input, thanks.
It's really rare for me to fully preconceive imagery. this scene and idea flowed out of the mush of paint moving around the surface. The swans were added late(to the original version), and were an "idea" that popped up and then "illustrated in" (though most likely without source material). I do feel conflict over that type of image making, and it was 50/50 whether they would stay.
I think the crude-ish mark-making keeps me from making depicted scenes. It helps to keep the paint physical and unpredictable.
I painted for many months using only earth tones, only I thought of them theoretically as primary colors.
red: Burnt Umber
yellow: Yellow Ochre
blue: Raw Umber and/or Black
+white
I actually found myself muting these already muted "primaries" with their compliment color (from the limited palette).
So you can "draw from your head." Envious! I have a terrible visual memory. Really, my swan might not even be recognizable.
I understand what you're saying about adding the swans here, but I think it works. They make it at once more real AND more fantastical.
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