From the Artist: I have tried to do the July painting project and here is my response. The urban environment around me in London has graffiti, violence, and a one-way sign I see every evening - lit up in the night -- as I close my curtain. I've had this thought that it points up
towards 'what?' God perhaps? I don't believe in God so I put myself in the dark. And God looks very stern because of the violence.
I realise that this may not be simplifying as perhaps abstracting should be, but this came out of me as a surprise, and in a different style to what I usually do. This little painting has a lot of meaning for me.
From the Painting Guide: I didn't want to set a rule for the project about how abstracted a scene should be. Besides being hard to define, leaving it loose also means individuals who usually paint very realistically can move only couple of steps away from their comfort zone if they've never tried abstracts in any form. So while I'm admittedly surprised to see a face so prominent in a challenge to do an urban abstraction, where I'd imagined I'd get paintings dominated by buildings, if this is where you ended up, then that's where you ended up. What's important is that you gave the challenge a go and that the result has meaning for you.
I wouldn't have interpreted the figure as God without your saying so, rather the painting gives me a sense of an individual being squeezed out by a built environment.
I realise that this may not be simplifying as perhaps abstracting should be, but this came out of me as a surprise, and in a different style to what I usually do. This little painting has a lot of meaning for me.
From the Painting Guide: I didn't want to set a rule for the project about how abstracted a scene should be. Besides being hard to define, leaving it loose also means individuals who usually paint very realistically can move only couple of steps away from their comfort zone if they've never tried abstracts in any form. So while I'm admittedly surprised to see a face so prominent in a challenge to do an urban abstraction, where I'd imagined I'd get paintings dominated by buildings, if this is where you ended up, then that's where you ended up. What's important is that you gave the challenge a go and that the result has meaning for you.
I wouldn't have interpreted the figure as God without your saying so, rather the painting gives me a sense of an individual being squeezed out by a built environment.