Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Something about a peacock?



Untitled yet, but might be something about a peacock. [OK, this really looks way more like a duck, so maybe something about a duck?]

Gouache on paper mounted on board (will soon have a coat of acrylic over it too)
12" x 12"

So this piece took me less than a year to complete! (Took about 12 days from start to finish, and I was up until 3am on many days working on it.)

I was inspired by this dress, called "The Wave", and you can see the ad I clipped out of the paper on the left. I'm obviously using the image in a rather, ahem, loose manor, as it barely has any resemblance to the dress. I really wanted to do a piece where the colors are not so intense (like the last piece); and I also wanted to do a piece where I leave some white space. I seem to be incapable of leaving white space, so I wanted to do that. And that turns out to be barely manageable—leaving white space, that is—but I left some. Maybe I'll do better on the next one.



I love the idea of looking at what seems like an infinite world, either through a microscope or through a telescope; I don't think I'll ever tire of doing that. Even without the aid of a scope, the world we can see through our naked eyes is so full of life known and unknown. I like the ambiguity of not knowing what I'm looking at, the juxtaposition of possibilities, of the microscopic, the cosmic, and of the everyday garden variety of life.



I also like the ambiguity of animate and inanimate objects...are those flowers or rock formations? Or maybe mushrooms.



At this point, I was thinking maybe this was a rock that was blowing fish eggs out of its mouth, but it really just looked too much like a peacock for me to ignore it. So a peacock it became. (See top image.)

6 comments:

Jenn Feeney said...

Your work speaks to me Shu-Ju.. Love it!

fingerstothebone said...

Jenn -- and your work to me! Lets form a Mutual Admiration Society!

Christina said...

That's really lovely. I like how soft everything is.

Air Zimbabwe said...

Wow! These pictures are truly master pieces.Really great art work. Keep up the good work.

Air Zimbabwe Uk said...

You did great job. Thanks for this.

arik airlines said...

outstanding work done. i really appriciate you. keep going