Memories from a horrific bus journey between La Caye and Jacmel have given me ideas for another painting in this series. Perhaps, I will reveal the background story for this piece, when I am closer to its completion.
I have initiated the process by working on an under image. This was then combined with a range of over layers and an ambiguous reflection of a little girl seen through a bus window. For this type of experimentation, I have recycled an old display board, which was covered with green felt. Subsequently, I started with some expressive colour application to the underpainting. This has been in turn over-printed with an A1 size screen of a $16 milk bottle. This is used metaphorically and symbolises how unobtainable this everyday food product is. I just cannot imagine never tasting milk!
The current tonation of the piece is vibrant and dramatic. My creative intention was to create a clash between the background composition and a suggested image of a distant and emotionless child.
The next phase will involve layers of overprints, which are subsequently blasted off with a powerful water jet. I would like to achieve a greater degree of mixing of layers and blending of individual colour ranges to increase the overall visual complexity of this piece.
What is distracting me at the moment is the purity of colour, which stands out too much and disturbs the overall mood of the image. I would also like to develop a greater sensitivity of colour. This should help to make the painting more holistic and melancholic. Perhaps, I should initiate a further experimentation with glazing and staining the image to increase the role of elements of aging and broken textures.
The image of the girl needs to behave as a distant reflection in the surface, almost with qualities of al fresco. For some strange reason, ‘The Little Girl’ has some resemblance to Mona Lisa. This similarity is not intentional though.
Da Vinci, (1503) “Mona Lisa” in The Independent, Farrell, J. (2017)
Ideally, I would like to develop this piece further before the start of Low Residency.
The plan is to proceed with overprinting the existing composition with a range of oranges. This is to age and patinate the piece and, more importantly, represent powerful and distorting reflections of the hot sun in the translucent glass.
This is what I recorded in my original observations in Haiti.
HYPNOTIC REPETITION 