Some more painting plans today, firstly to clear out many old ideas. So many ideas linger for years, waiting to be finished. It would sometimes be joyous to just delete them all and start again, but each time I consider it, I think that it would take hardly any time at all to finish them all, and I decide to charge though them quickly. So today I started plans for four new paintings. I've completed four in the past week, so I can work in batches of four!
First, I've completed the drawing and canvas preparations for the Oliver Cromwell painting. I need to assemble more images and work on some basic studies. I like to produce a shaded pencil study (contrasts are so important) and perhaps a painted colour study too.
After that, division up of some existing or planned works. One is new, and currently called Self Inspection at Theresienstadt. It was inspired by this painting made of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, a Jewish concentration/death camp in Nazi Germany:
Note the eyes in the rooftops. The painting began on the left, with the hidden activities; elicit love, and a moribund or morose prisoner behind the bars. Facades of shops or normal buildings are covering up a pile of corpses. Eyes on the roof watch; eyes of the guards. The message is that everything is being watched, but things are taking place in the shadows, out of sight. A corpse reaches up a mangled hand towards a black door, a door next to an anthropomorphic tree; the grim reaper. Behind the door birds swarm; the message here is that death is the only escape.
The drawing reminded me of my old 'Waiting For B.T.' picture for some reason. I've decided to revisit this with my own homage and interpretation. The themes of the original can be true for ordinary life; some parts of life are overt and public, some (the truth?) hidden, and death is the only escape in the end. My version toys with the visible and overt, the positive joys, and the dark and disturbing realities and anxieties; but neither is dominant. Truth flicks between both, the truth is both at once. Is even death an escape? Is death positive or negative, overt or hidden? I don't know.
