| ...... |
I contacted you initially as I found your painting called "Isabella and Tiny" in RedBubble as I was in the early stages of seeking out works of art entitled Isabella. I have explained a little why I do this in my About Page on this blog. I am particularly fond of this piece for a number of reasons, these I will go through and these will form the questions which I have broken down into a series of blog posts.
First of all the fairy in the image, Isabella, I am fond of images portraying the fantastical and this is not unusual in your work. Having taken a look at your fairy and your angel collection in Redbubble I am astounded at the range of characteristics portrayed. You seem to be unfettered in your depiction of seemingly singular themes. Your fairy and angel collections cover (to name a few) the range of sweet, cute, sullen, gothic, gaudy, bright and whimsical - that is an outstanding range - so this brings me my first question.
| ...... |
Do you actively and consciously practise approaching similar themes from many directions or is this something that occurs if you are so proliferous in your creativity?
Kay, I must say that most of my ideas are very spontaneous and haven't had a great deal of what I'd call conscious thought, however, I do allow myself very often to drift into daydreams and I have a particular penchant for joining the dots, so that whatever I see throughout my days, I tend to make up little stories in my head about them, or say to myself, "gosh, that looks like an ethereal place to be", "gee up ahead looks like a spot where fairies might dwell if they were real", I also dream up scenarios to explain my drawings and paintings afterward, like I might want to explain how it is that fairies aren't visible during the day and leave no evidence, so I decide that they roll up the fire and it turns to gold, and they roll up the coals which turn to silver, this is fairy currency. The fairy currency is then delivered to the bottom of the lake, river, ocean, which is why it sparkles a lot when the sun is on it, and the fish and sylphs etc, protect the treasure, by swimming over it back and forth. I just make these ideas up on the spot, purely for my own amusement really. I have always done so, since a child, and don't seem to have ever stopped doing it. I enjoy the break it gives me for 'real life' to venture off into unknown places and journeys in my mind's eye, it's sort of relaxing and refreshing, a form of leisure for me. It also helps when I'm writing poetry or stories and is a natural way to develop characters. It's not really deliberate I don't think, it's just a part of who I seem to be. I have always been fascinated by elven and fairy lore, mermaids and the like. I might see ideas in real life, I think and I file them away for future use to add flavour and new dimensions. I do have a tendency to be OCD so I will explore a particular theme until it's completely done over before I move on. Then sometimes, I'll return to it once again, to make sure I've covered every base, so you could relate it to having OCD nature :) lol
| ...... |
Thanks Karin it's great to see such a brilliant imagination sparking away underneath your artwork. That's truly inspiring. I also find it encouraging to know I'm not the only one who insists on working on an idea until I have it out of my system - last night I created thirty five suns for the weather part of a creative project, odd really as you normally only get one in the sky at a time, if your lucky! Funny thing is we have rain galore over here at the moment! Today I have promised myself a study of rain and puddles.
I sometimes comfort myself in looking at some of the great artists in history and realising they did things like that. For example to an onlooker that didn't get it, Monet, with this repeated attempts to capture the quality of light on haystacks must have appeared a little odd. If someone did not understand what was going on in his head and what he could see and the attempt to try and capture it, it could have appeared to me merely obsessive. Those who noticed must have known he'd done one picture of a haystack already. Can you imagine some comments "What on earth are all these pictures of haystacks for? The fella's not a bad artist you know, what on earth is he doing messing with these?" No doubt they would have done that in French though and without the Yorkshire "Fella" bit - but you get my point! I can't help imagining Monet setting an alarm so he could get to his subject at sunrise and his excitement in doing so. It personally makes my heart beat faster just thinking about his anticipation Monet's repeated studies has been relatively public on particular themes maybe because he had the finance to put them on proper canvas but I bet that loads of amazing artists were scribbling and artistically fighting with subjects, both while working and in those lull times as you drift off to sleep. Some of those we won't ever see as they would have been on bits of scrap material, lost sketches or they worked over to use expensive canvas for a saleable item.
I do have more questions for you Karin and I'll return to the next one in my next post.
In the meantime for those of you who don't know Karin's work I'd encourage you set aside a little enjoyment time to check out her artwork. If you find a favourite feel free to leave a comment here or if you are flying by and you are one of the people that Karin has encouraged and helped on the way to developing your own work through her great attitude or through her book or creative exercises then do give us a wave! I know I have some good questions for Karin in my next few posts and it would be great if you got involved and shared that journey with us.
| ...... |
UPDATE: Go ahead and read Part 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment
It's always a pleasure to receive feedback it would be great if you left a comment on the content of this post or just to say "Hi!". Look forward to hearing from you. Kay.