The Cave
Release & Fire Girl

A comparison of old and recent work...

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release_rage.jpg
Release (2003)

 
 
 
 
 
The concept came to me during a night I was partucularly tense and frusterated about something (that I cannot even remember now), yet had to keep it pent up.  The image came to me in the shower, where I had turned up the water as hot as I could bear it...so that I could feel something that seemed to come close to matching my anger...and just let the water beat on my chest, but imagined it as if all my anger and frustration was flowing out of me as the water hit and flowed down.
 
Then the image came into my head.
So I sketched it out and eventually transferred the sketch to canvasboard.
 
"Release" is definitely a pure, raw emotion piece.  The first time I have expressed emotion (as opposed to symbolism) in a painting.


flames.jpg
Fire Girl (2000)

 
 
"Fire Girl" was just another random image that came to my head.  No emotion around it...no real symbolism...which might account for how bad I find it now.  Some of my Portfolio classmates thought she was in hell...no...she isn't. 
 
I recall the great difficulty I had with her skin tone though, due to having to mix my own flesh tone for her.  But when you mix what seems to be a perfect flesh tone, and then class is over or you don't mix enough to cover all the area you want...it's very hard to mix more a second time to be able to match the previous tone exactly. 
She went through at least 6 different shades of skin before I got it right.  After doing this painting, I always buy pre-mixed flesh tone paint and lighten or darken it as needed.  But no more mixing!
 
"Fire Girl" definitely pales in comparison to "Release".  But it shows how much I've grown as an artist within 3 years. I think that's the only reason I've put it here...after seeing my more recent work...I really hate this painting!  I'm willing to sell it...any takers?