I have something a little different for you this time. This was from a stage set I made for a playwright friend of mine, Paul Kennedy. It is one of 3 paintings I made in a hurry so as to decorate the set. It was painted in my bathroom over the sink and to be in compliance with HiveWatchers rules, it is a rip off of Munch's' 'The Scream' which happens to be my favourite painting. So much pain and anguish in his work and a real reflection of the life he had. I thought it suited the atmosphere of the play but wanted to do it with a twist.
Never send a sculptor to paint a picture
The play revolved around a painter and an architect. and all took place in one the location of the artist's studio. I knew it would have to have some prop paintings but I did not want them to take away from the action and become a focal point. I wanted the audience to imagine rather than see the image and I thought to do this I would work in monochrome and heavily textured. You could see something painted on the canvas but could not make it out.
I made three paintings. The scream, adds to the tortured artist malarkey the main character was experiencing in the story. A landscape which looked like one of his earlier works and 'twas a copy of a Constable painting. (unfortunately, I have no photo of that for some reason)
The third was this portrait. I hope you will agree that I am a better sculptor than painter but I do like the technique and think that I could do an awful lot more with it if I ever got back into painting.
It would have been better if the paint had been thicker. I did use some bulking-up goo in the paint to make it impasto but I was also conscious of the time I had. I really had to make these quickly over one evening and hope that they would dry in time for the curtains to go up. I also had a set to make and source.
The set was simple enough. I took inspiriting from Lars von Trier's Dogville. To wall off the action, I used tape on the ground. This was a nod to the Architect in the play. I hung my pictures on fishing wire where the walls were supposed to be. The furniture I got on Done Deal Which is a website to get second-hand stuff and sometimes even people give stuff away for free.
The couch and the hat stand were difficult things to source, especially on the tiny budget I had. I finally found the couch for free and just needed to get a van to pick it up. It was the perfect colour and style I was looking for and nearly thought I would be keeping it after the show but when I picked it up it turned out that it was used as a seat by a dog, a dog who had recently died on it. It was covered in hair and stank to high heavens. I hated even touching the damn thing.
It added more effort to my work as I had to clean the whole thing and hope that it would dry under the theatre lighting and that the actors would be ok with it.
The coat stand cost the most at €25 Euros and along with the free chair and table, I painted them to a muted blue-gray.
The show itself was entertaining enough with the Architect who had been a patron of the artist during the Celtic tiger finally trying to screw him during the 2008 recession.
The acting was good and I think the apace, although simple really gave the performers the space they needed to let the script do its thing.
I had worked with the actor Steve Gunn on a short film and really enjoyed working with him. He was the artist in the piece and again gave a great performance. I hadn't worked with the others before but they all came across quite well.
As a project I enjoyed it. I like to work under a certain amount of pressure and with just three days to put everything together I had just that. Getting back into a bit of painting was nice as it was the first thing I did when I wanted to become an artist. I will share some of my paintings one day when I have gotten through documenting all my sculptures.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
Building Lisa's folly - Wood Sculpture
Lisa's folly - Wood sculpture
Emulating Aardman - modelling clay sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite
I am also starting to create NFTs of my sculptures and welcome you to my gallery where you can own a bit of ephemeral sculpture history.