Recently I came to realize that depending on the meaning of a painting, a new style of painting arises… I have discovered that my love for painting the perfect beauty and fantasy since childhood was always an escape to reality that has helped me throughout the years.
However, when I attempt to express my fears another rather darker and psychological style arises as if, another personality or pseudonym takes over.
This painting is called ‘The Verdict’’ and is about my feelings of academic anxiety and often discrimination.
The Verdict, oil on canvas
Look at the paintings from the right and left, are these from the same artist?
Summer Girl- Fado
Incense Burner – Skrying Sketch
Spiritual2 – Windmill
I have found some links of artists who had severe personality disorders and multiple styles worth having a look:
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vumcpub/index.html?pubID=7&articleID=517
Angela,
What’s common to all your paintings is that they are intensely personal. In that sense, it’s not surprising that they clearly reflect your different moods. Although my all-time favorite — Spiritual 2 — is a darker one, I have to say that the variety really increases the interest of each. The complexity of the artist is a great attraction. It’s very intriguing to see them displayed together as you’ve done here.
Your Scrying painting seems to be right in the middle of your stylistic extremes, with its darker, grayer, and bluer colors, but still with strong yellow and green. Maybe you were seeing both aspects in the water?
I found the work by artists with multiple personality disorder fascinating. Art therapy makes a lot of sense to me here, as the paintings are tangible traces of the various personalities that are very bound up emotionally and intellectually with the creator(s).
Perhaps it was just a slip, but your “escape to reality” seems apropos.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon
Angela:
Thanks for showing us this. Frankly I hadn’t connected the dots up to now. For me some of your paintings depict a glamorous person with something of a clothing-optional attitude, who poses amid a collection of scenes, symbols and attributes – mostly of a positive nature. I know better for goodness sake, but I was ready to accept this in something of a Rauschenberg spirit, as an associative gathering of elements, rather dispassionately presented. Now I am called upon to respond at a deeper level where more profoundly personal forces appear to interact.
A comment concerning the manner of presentation: your “happy” paintings tend to play across the canvas with something of a separation from the viewer while your “sad” paintings, for lack of a better term, have elements in a kind of perspective that projects both inwards and outwards. I can theorize about this, but would rather hear what you have to say.
Angela,
Thank you for the compilation of images — they are exciting in a different way than the ones that appear singularly. Like Robert Irwin (I love to identify with that mind) I need context, a greater scope, to see better.
That said, we all have multiple personalities — but most people try to hide the “odd” ones and pull up only those that fit their personal narratives. You are not trying to fit everything into a single whole, and that makes your work more personal and more, it seems to me, authentic.
As for those rancid crows (or are they ravens?) remember, they too are you. And you can chase them or let them snort and snuffle around and ignore them or engage them, depending upon which Angela is in charge. Remember it was Raven who stole the light and then, of course, lost it when eagle and he got into a contretemps. That was after he impregnated (and then was born to) the human granddaughter of the old guy who had the light hidden inside many boxes. Raven couldn’t stand glimpses of the light and although he had been told never to go near the boxes that held it, of course he had to see. And that’s how the world got light.
Angela,
A fascinating presentation! Like Jay, I am intrigued by the differences in perspective. You probably will say again that it is up to us to figure out what it means to us..
P.S. Some of us like ravens. I put a stuffed raven that someone gave me on my window sill. It now feels like the raven is a friend who is greeting me when I come home to where I currently live by myself.
I love the being behind the woman in the chair that brings consolation and strength.
June:
Do your ravens naturally snort, or do they do so as you whisper in their ears, you raven whisperer you (?).
Jay,
Ravens around home refuse to acknowledge the existence of mere humans. So it’s the crows who talk to me — they are great gossips and have told me all sorts of things about Raven as well as the family to which she belongs. I am thinking that Angela’s creatures are ravens–wannnabe; she needs to turn them into friendlier crows — raucous, funny, and not really censorious, just full of blather.
June:
About those crows: must one be present to so converse? I’ve read some of the warning labels on those fabric art preparations… Incidentally, a can or two of Krylon spray paint works best for me. Crows, squirrels, earthworms – you name it.
Speaking about Angela’s birds as though she were not in the room – they’re among the most interesting creatures I’ve seen on A&P. They remind me of some of our local politicians.