Saturday, August 8, 2009

Narratives

Oil on canvas  61x88 cm  Sold 
Finalist for the Mosman Art Prize 2009

I saw some paper cut out dolls at a friend's place made by her daughter and it struck me as such an evocative motif.  After several efforts with scissors and much snipping I made my own version and decided to arrange them so they appear to be dancing out of the book rather like a narrative.  Their repetitive shapes interested me as did the shadows made by the pages of the book.  The candle stick I thought looked rather like an authoritarian figure: a grand narrative in his own right and the wooden puppet sitting on the book is the audience.  That was my thinking on one level; on another, I liked the different whites of the candle, paper and wood which leads the eye around the composition.