My painting ‘Morning After’
The Idea for this painting came from exploring the subject ‘Curiosity’ and the question – ‘What exactly am I Curious about?’. This led me to 2 areas of focus
- I am interested in Relationships
- Hidden elements make me curious
This original scene I remember from a party at home. Friends sleeping after a party. Next morning when I saw them, they were under the sheet and I kept thinking what exactly has happened between them, and, why? My basic narrative was to show a spilt red wine on a white sheet and create a sort of murder scene but in the process of painting I thought I would skip the wine stain to create intrigue and curiosity with more narratives.
I found their poses extremely interesting and thought provoking.
I arranged this similar scene getting my friends to model for me and used the photo references for this painting. The subject gave me lots of different approaches to think about.
The idea of curiosity comes across in several ways in this painting. For example:
Who are these people? what is their relationship with each other?
Is there anything else under the sheet? Are they naked? What is their gender? What is their age? The sheets hide many mysteries for the viewer and we can use our imagination to write our own stories.
I would like to add that I found working on a large scale painting to be very therapeutic. One works on a specific area one day and the next day one is inspired to come up with new concepts. This has given me the patience to think about my painting and wait for surprises to happen.
For me this painting stands between abstraction and reality. As Artist MICHAEL SIMPSON says “a painting should move beyond its subject.”