This is something I’m working on at the minute so is unfinished but I thought I would show where I’m at currently!
I really liked repurposing my life drawings in the last painting so I decided to redraw them all into smaller and tighter drawings which could be ‘ready to use’ in future paintings.
Whilst in lockdown I took some photographs of plant pots in my garden because all the plants were in full bloom and really beautiful. I couldn’t help but make the comparison between these wonderful unique worlds of flora, contained within a single pot each unique to one another but all the same, and my own situation. Each house on my street, and probably a lot of streets in the world, contained a different mix of people with their own activities and interests and ways of coping with the isolation of the pandemic; just like the plants we were all limited to our own container yet so close to others in the same situation.
This inspired my idea to again integrate life drawings of people into nature, this time I had the image of tiny people who live in the pot, like fairies or nymphs but less magical and much more human. Almost like a family within their home finding ways to spend their time.
So far I’ve painted some of the pots and sky but it needs some editing, I’ve used oil paints and painting onto canvas- I just like this way of creating work because I have room to create whatever I can imagine in my head.
My next step is to paint the plants and the people within them.
I’m still considering things like the ratio of male and female bodies and really I hope to not put a focus on gender and just have androgynous human forms within the leaves. Also skin colour is something I’m thinking about as it is an important consideration as I know it will factor into the viewers perception of the piece, one option is to do what I did last time and blend the body into the natural surroundings so have green leaf people.
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