If I have to summarize my career as an artist, I would say that the
biggest achievement I’ve attained was the creation of my portrait
painting “Grandma”.
Grandma
Oil on Canvas
40″ x 30″
Completed in 2003
This painting, created during the time when George W. Bush was
drumming up to invade Iraq, despite the series opposition from the
people within and without the US.
At the time, I was reading Günter Grass’s fantastic novel The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel),
and was struck by a passage depicting the a protagonist’s old peasant
grandma, whose presence in the novel, though not frequent, but
impressive, due to the wonderful depiction of the author of her at
various phases of her long life – many layers of her skirts, her peeling
potatoes, the heated bricks she used to stay warm, again, underneath her layers of skirts.
I have painted several portraits of old women. To me, they often can be categorized as sibyl,
a word comes (via Latin) from the Greek word σίβυλλα sibylla, meaning
prophetess. Old women are the personifications of mysterious wisdom and
deep compassion, and the grandma in The Tin Drum was the personification of just that.
To generate a working-class and wise woman, I gave her a pair of
large knotting hands and wrinkled face, and emphasized her stiff
posture, against the equally thinly painted menacing sky, and somewhat
comforting trees, whose monumentality again gave the grandma an air of a
Greek goddess, all seeing, compassionate, and formidable.
This painting is part of my ongoing Apocalypse Series and can be purchased via a trusted third party vendor, ArtSlant, which also chose it as a Showcase Winner.
Originally posted on my website: Featured Works.
Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- "Arabesque" and Other Paintings Inspired by Literature
- A Portrait - First Painting Completed in 2012 - Matthew Felix Sun
- "Sibyls" - Portraits of Old Women
- "Diptych - Dawn" Won Another Award - Matthew Felix Sun
Sunday, February 9, 2014
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