A second set of photographs inspired by the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi for this weeks Kick About. One thing I do appreciate in our home is the high ceilings, although I think I could do with a few more inches atop the doorframes.
This weeks Kick about over on Reds Kingdom is the art of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. Hammershøi’s paintings feel so breathy and poetic, Like you are peeking into the lives of the mysterious figures. I can’t help but think of a victorian doll house with all its little furniture placed exactly as the collector envisions. I was initially inspired by the gorgeous light throughout Hammershøi’s paintings and awoke at the crack of dawn to capture the sun as it pooled in through the shutters and windows where the light licked the walls, doors and wooden furniture. I decided last minute to perch myself in areas that could resemble the people in Hammershøi’s paintings and dressed myself in a darker colour palette to match. I edited out all the ugly stuff that could resemble a modern rented house in London, including cracks and fire exit signs. Our house is very old and shows a lot of wear and tear so removing those elements was exiting to get a glimpse of probably how it once was.
A second set of cosmos created initially from ingredients found in my kitchen and composited into orbiting planets and galaxies. What I loved about these experiments is that they were initially all accidents, I didn’t know the chemical reaction of vinegar, vegetable oil, alka seltzer tablets and some food colouring along with a bit of staging and lighting could produce something so other worldly. I distinctly remember feeling so elated from this practice and spending countless hours into the night snapping away.
This weeks fortnightly kick about creative prompt is the short film Powers of Ten 1977 directed by Charles and Ray Eames. This film made me think of how minute our little planet is and wonder about the possibilities of life many light years away. I wonder what those other planets could look like and the beings that inhabit them. I decided to create some Nebulas using the textures from a previous exhilarating kick about and stamped them onto simple 3D spheres, superimposing them atop those same textures while painting galactic elements to create milkyways that possibly maybe could be.
A second darker and more ominous cluster of images from the trailing dirt road in a nestled and secluded spot in Ireland. More ominous indeed, as a recent shower saturated the flora and darkened the landscape in a midnight blue, the sun rays only slightly visible when peaking through certain patches and glittering selected treetops and overgrowth.
This weeks kick about prompt on Red’s Kingdom is the melancholic coo’s of Molly Drake’s I remember. The song brought a tear to my eye, how such a poet can write something so striking about the melancholic juxtaposition of both light and dark. It brought back memories of people that have come and gone out of my life, but also the places where those memories and faces come bubbling up when passing in a car or walking past a particular patch of land, like reveries of times I will never forget.”
Gentle Giant 