Girl with tenor banjo (click to enlarge)
"The Angel at Gossamer Creek", painting by Amy Crehore copyright 2010, 16"x16", oil on linenCLICK TO ENLARGE
Girl with ukulele detail close-up
"The Waiting Pool", painting by Amy Crehore copyright 2010, 12"x 24", oil on linen (CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE, open window for full effect)
I finally got some 4x5 transparencies taken of my new paintings and scanned them for you.
I finally got some 4x5 transparencies taken of my new paintings and scanned them for you.
I also posted these paintings larger here: http://artofamycrehore.blogspot.com/
The Art of Amy Crehore (my regular website)
9 comments:
The colors are delicious and both pieces are extraordinarily delightful on a gloomy raining day such as today is here. Thank you so much for posting :) 'The Waiting Pool' makes for an exceptional desktop and creates an undeniable smile on ones face.
Thanks! I am glad that I could finally show them to you. It is gloomy here, too. I am super happy that you like them.
I love your paintings, Amy! I'm very pleased when new works appear at boingboing.
These are fantastic. i'm officially a huge fan.
these are amazing. i'm officially a huge fan.
Thanks for the nice comments!
Hi Amy. I found your blog today, the same day as it happened that I was to teach a class of 12 year old Koreans about "perception" in art. I decided that your piece "The Angel at Gossamer Creek" would be perfect to start the conversation, as it had just enough ambiguity to allow for different interpretations (plus the fact that I just really loved it).
First of all, I went to ask my head teacher, Kendra, if she thought this was appropriate for 12 year olds. She looked at me confused. Of course it was, she said. But that surprised me, because to me this painting has quite clear, and sinister, sexual overtones. The elongated legs of the banjo player, the satisfied girls looking down upon the boy with the wilted flower who looks like he's crying, the other boy dressed as a clown peeking from behind the trees. To me, it seemed like a statement on emasculation in the face of powerful femininity. Not that I had rationalised this at the time, I only started to put it together after the conversation with Kendra. But she said she couldn't see any of that. To her, it looked like a painting of a family day out with a minor quarrel.
So I took it in to my students, and they had a completely different take again. The children were playing hide n seek. There was no sinister undertone (I didn't share my theory, beyond saying that I thought the girls had made the boys sad). They responded to the painting with warm emotions.
So there you go. Several different reactions from several generations and even several cultures. I ended up being the most surprised of anyone. And that was my lesson on perception.
Wow, Clayton. That's very interesting! Lots of different interpretations. When I paint, I am concerned with making interesting compositions w/emotion. The characters have relationships to each other, but even I am not sure what they are.
The boy could just be shy or bored or listening to the music and playing with a branch from the tree, but his pose makes one think that he might be sad or hurt by one of the others. Maybe the weather is hot. I like the angles of his pose. The banjo player is a teenager or young woman who has long legs and summer outfit. Perhaps she is the older sister or the "angel" in the title. It's all "made up" by me, so it's fun when other people make up their own stories and I'm glad that you and your students did just that. It's true that I seldom put full grown men in my art. I paint a lot of girls with ambiguous characters (This one does have a man running after a wild turkey in the background, though.) With this painting, I was concerned with building a landscape based on memory and creating characters from scratch and somehow getting it all to work together as a whole.
Thank you for posting!
Amy
"The Waiting Pool" reminds me of Renoir. It's bucolic with sprinkles of oddity and mystery. I love the "The Angel at Gossamer Creek." It's sad and sweet and funny (perfect with the runaway turkey). I think it's about the song being played on the banjo, the artist, her muse and the audience.
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