Fairy tales

I have been so busy lately!  Over Easter I had the flu and was in bed asleep for about six days, so now I have been catching up on art assignments that I could have been doing over the holidays.

This is the miniature I was working on today.  The picture area is about 8 x 10 inches.  This is for my painting class.  The idea is to produce a painting in a genre and media we are familiar with, then, in the same genre, produce another painting using a technique and media that is more of a challenge.  This work is for the first part of the assessment.  It is acrylic, used transparently like watercolour, on handmade paper.  It illustrates the story of Catskin, a variant of the Cinderella motif.

Although the impact is rather lost in the workshop environment, this is my installation called Remembrance Day.  It was inspired by Cai Guo Qiang's large installation called 'Head On', which was recently exhibited in my city, Brisbane.  If you google his work you will see that his ideas are huge and spectacular!  He did Head On as a response to seeing the remains of the Berlin Wall.  I did a lot of research, and, thinking about Anzac Day, started to think about war and remembrance.  I discovered the wearing of the white poppy was a plea for peace and a desire to remember even the victims of war.  The wolf is a brave spirit, full of camaraderie and tenacity.... So this installation is about bravery and sorrow.

On another slant, the wolf is an iconic fairytale character, and, like fairy tales themselves, their regard or perception changes with the current time and society.  The wolf in the installation mirrors us, reflects what we want him to be.