Back in October I participated in a photo project through instagram, called Foliophoto. The idea was that for every day in October there would be a different word or phrase attributed like “look up”,”coffee” or “selfie”. You would take a picture of what that meant to you and tag it #foliophoto, so that everyone involved be inspired by each other’s different ideas, lives, and aesthetic. It was through this project that I became familiar with Sandra Harris who runs a blog and evening salon series called Raincoast Creative Salon. She started the foliophoto project with another gal, Christie Jones from Bedsidesign. It was just so fun to virtually meet all of these creative types and get to know a little bit about one another’s work!
Sandra then asked me, along with Melanie Biehle who runs Inward Facing Girl, to be one of the inaugural artists for their collaboration…We Are The Contributors. Their idea is brilliant-to create a website for artists and photographers, bloggers and all creative types to connect and collaborate on bi-monthly projects. For the first issue (launched yesterday!) me and 9 other creatives were asked to create a piece of art of our chosen medium (poem, painting, song, even recipe!) based on the inspiration of 3 paintings shown at the 1913 Armory Show in NYC. It is, afterall, the 100th anniversary of the show that created a landscape for modern art. The three pieces were Edvard Munch’s Madonna, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2 and John Marin’s Woolworth Building No. 31. I chose Munch’s Madonna as my inspiration and here’s why.
Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944), Madonna, 1895-1902. Color lithograph on wove, tan, mixed fiber paper, 17 5/16 x 17 ½ in.
I am currently working on a series of paintings that explore the melding of portraiture and abstract geometric shapes. The idea that the energy that surrounds us could be a completely different tangible shape. Munch’s Madonna has a glowing energy around her like a halo of light. I couldn’t help but think of music. I get a lot of my ideas for my paintings while running and listening to music. This series is specifically influenced by electronica music.
I imagine that when the music breaks down into fast electrifying beats, it’s coming apart like an avalanche of rocks off of a mountain or swirling meteors in space. And because Munch’s Madonna is so completely lost in thought I wanted my woman to be lost in sound. The idea for the heart came much later in my process. I didn’t know where I wanted the headphones to lead. And then it just made sense to make it a real heart. Kind of appropriate considering my obsession with adding hearts to my art. Here’s my painting on the Contributor’s site and a little peak into the progression of Heart Sounds…
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She got tattooed at one point…
Adding the shapes…
And then cleaning them up.
Experimenting with color palette and texture…
And whiting it out.
Implementing the heart…
And shocking color
But decided that they looked like pizza…
So back to clean bright white.
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The completed piece…
Heart Sounds, 24 x 30, acrylic and ink on canvas, 2013.
Check out all of the incredible Artists involved…everyone’s got such a unique take on the original inspiration. You can follow on Twitter with the hashtag #aContributor and on the Facebook page. And request to be involved in a project at We Are The Contributors and collaborate with other creatives!
